Guardian August 15, 2000 � How police made Stones drug charges stick Alan Travis, home affairs editor Tuesday The police luridly played up the image of Marianne Faithfull as "a girl" wearing nothing but a fur rug which she deliberately "let fall" from time to time in their infamous 1967 drugs raid on the Rolling Stones because they lacked any real evidence against Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, recently released police and court records confirm. The official files in the public record office and the West Sussex county archives show how far the police were prepared to "fit up" the Rolling Stones after their bungled drugs raid on a weekend house party at Redlands, Richards' Sussex country home, on a tip-off from the News of the World. The case papers demonstrate that once the police realised they did not have enough evidence to secure drugs convictions against the rock stars, they set about putting the most lurid possible "spin" on the scene they did encounter when 18 officers poured into the West Wittering house in February 1967. Police officers testified that they "noticed an unusual smell" which "was not burning wood" and that they found Faithfull, who was referred to only as Miss X at the trial, in a "merry mood'" sitting "on a settee wrapped in a fur rug with several male persons" and that she "let it fall from her shoulders from time to time". The suggestion that her behaviour might be linked to smoking cannabis was backed up by a Scotland Yard drug squad detective who was drafted in to testify that the smell of joss sticks and incense was used by cannabis smokers to hide the smell of the drug. "I know the smell of cannabis. I liken the smell to burning hay and I would describe it as a strong picric [acid] smell," Det Insp John Lynch testified. It was enough to persuade Judge Leslie Block at the West Sussex quarter session to sentence Keith Richards to 12 months in prison and Mick Jagger to three months. The sentences caused a national outcry and were portrayed as an establishment attempt to crucify Britain's most insolent rock band. Even the Times condemned the prison sentences in a leader that quoted William Blake's Who Breaks a Butterfly on a Wheel. Eventually Lord Parker, the lord chief justice, quashed the jail sentences saying no proper evidence of hashish smoking had been found during the raid.
