R v Marriott
[1971] 1 WLR 187
Independent editorial summary — not the official judgment. Read the full judgment via the source link.
Ratio Decidendi
A person is not in unlawful possession of a drug which, unknown to him, is adhering to an article in his custody: proof of mere possession of the article, without more, is not enough. The prosecution must establish that the defendant knew a foreign substance was present, although — consistently with Warner v Metropolitan Police Commissioner — a person who knows he possesses something cannot escape liability merely because he did not know its nature.
Facts
Police raided the defendant's house and found a penknife with traces of cannabis resin adhering to a broken blade. He was convicted of unlawful possession of the drug. Beyond his custody of the penknife itself, knowledge of the presence of the resin traces had not been established, and he appealed against conviction.
Judgment Summary
The Court of Appeal quashed the conviction. Construing the House of Lords' decision in Warner v Metropolitan Police Commissioner, the court held that it was not the law that proof of the mere possession of the penknife, without more, was enough: some knowledge of the presence of the foreign substance on the blade had to be shown. At the same time the court recognised the limit of that requirement — a man who is in possession of a box and knows there are articles of some sort inside it cannot be heard to say, when the contents turn out to comprise cannabis resin, that he did not know the contents included resin. The case became a standard illustration, alongside Warner, that possession offences import a minimum mental element as to the presence of the thing possessed; the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 subsequently made express provision for lack-of-knowledge defences in section 28.
Key Quotes
"It does not seem to us to be the law that proof of the mere possession of the penknife, without more, was enough."
— The Court of Appeal in R v Marriott [1971] 1 All ER 595 at 597, as quoted in the dissent of Mulligan J in Lennon v Immigration and Naturalization Service, 527 F.2d 187 (2d Cir 1975), footnote 2(verbatim, verified against the judgment)
"If a man is in possession of a box and he knows there are articles of some sort inside it and it turns out that the contents comprise, for example, cannabis resin, it does not lie in his mouth to say: 'I did not know the contents included resin.'"
— The Court of Appeal in R v Marriott, 55 Cr App R 82, as quoted in the majority opinion in Lennon v Immigration and Naturalization Service, 527 F.2d 187 (2d Cir 1975), footnote 9(verbatim, verified against the judgment)
Subsequent Treatment
Cited in Blackstone's Criminal Practice (para A1.4), together with Warner v Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1969] 2 AC 256, for the proposition that a person does not possess something which, unknown to him, has become stuck to the sole of his shoe or the blade of his penknife.
Both the majority and the dissent of the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit examined Marriott in Lennon v Immigration and Naturalization Service, 527 F.2d 187 (2d Cir 1975), when analysing whether the British drugs offence underlying John Lennon's 1968 cannabis conviction required guilty knowledge.
Parliament repealed the Dangerous Drugs Act and passed the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, providing explicitly (section 28) that a defendant should be acquitted if he proves that he neither believed nor suspected nor had reason to suspect that the substance in question was a controlled drug — a development the Lennon court linked to the Warner/Marriott case law.
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