Warner v Metropolitan Police Commissioner; R v Warner
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | LORD JUSTICE DIPLOCK |
| Judgment Date | 30 June 1967 |
| Judgment citation (vLex) | [1967] EWCA Crim J0630-2 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) |
| Docket Number | No. 559/67 |
[1967] EWCA Crim J0630-2
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL
CRIMINAL DIVISION
Royal Courts of Justice
Lord Justice Diplock
Mr. Justice Brabin
and
Mr. Justice Waller
No. 559/67
MR. R. FRISBY appeared as Counsel for the Appellant.
MR. J. HAZAN appeared as Counsel for the Crown.
This is an appeal against conviction and an application for leave to appeal against sentence by the appellant who was convicted on the 3rd February of this year at the Inner London Sessions of unauthorized possession of drugs, no less than 20,000 amphetamine sulphate tablets being involved. He was sentenced for that offence to two years imprisonment.
The grounds upon which he appeals against conviction are two-fold, the most important one being a complaint that the learned Chairman did not give a proper direction to the jury on possession, as that expression is used in Section 1(1) of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1964.
The facts of the case are simple. On the 18th November, a police officer stopped the appellant who was driving a small van. In the back of it he found, among other things, three cases which the appellant said contained rubbish. On examination one of the cases contained a quantity of scent bottles and another contained a plastic bag in which there were 20,000 amphetamine sulphate tablets. When asked whore they came from, the appellant said that they came from his address, and when the officer said that the tablets looked like pep pills, as indeed they were, the appellant replied that he did not know where they came from. He said the scent came from a man named Bill whose address he did not know.
The evidence as it came out, and this was really not disputed, was that the appellant had gone earlier in the day to the proprietor of a cafe where he was accustomed to collect, he said, scent from Bill; that when he got there he was told by the proprietor that a parcel from Bill was under the counter, that the appellant looked under the counter and there he found two parcels, one of which was that which contained scent. The other was that which turned out to contain the drugs. He said he assumed both of them contained scent.
The Prosecution was brought for having in his possession these tablets without being duly authorised contrary to Section 1 of the Drugs (Prevention of Misuse) Act, 1964. That Section provides that "it shall not be lawful for a person to have in his possession a substance for the time being specified in the Schedule to this Act" - except under specified conditions which it is not suggested were complied with in the present case. The corresponding provision in Regulation 9 of the Dangerous Drugs (No. 2) Regulations, 1964 is that: "A person shall not be in possession of a drug … unless he is generally so authorised, or under this Regulation, so licensed or authorised". It was this Regulation which was considered by a Divisional Court in Lockyer v. Gibbs (1966 3 W. L. R. 84), but the minor differences in phraseology between it and the Section with which we are now concerned do not in our view make any difference between the effect of the Regulation and that of the Section.
The learned Chairman, following as he considered, the decision of the Divisional Court in Lockyer v. Gibb, directed the jury on the question of possession in this way. He said: "The prosecution have got to prove that that substance is one of the prohibited substances. That you may well think has been done, because, indeed, nobody disputes that, but then they have got to prove that this man had these tablets in this box in his possession". He goes on later: "Now then, members of the jury, it was under control because 'possession' means that you have control. This man quite clearly had, and does not deny he had, control of these pills, and if he had, and it is a matter for you to make up your minds about because you are the judges of facts -...
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