Not my drugs and not my trousers, ex-addict explains (From Surrey Comet)

Not my drugs and not my trousers, ex-addict from Wimbledon explains

7:50am Saturday 4th February 2012 in Wimbledon By Omar Oakes

An ex-drug addict caught having sex on a car was cleared of possessing hard drugs because he picked up someone else's trousers, a court heard.

Simon Williams, 42, was found not guilty of possessing heroin and crack cocaine which police found in a car he had borrowed without driving insurance on September 10, 2011.

The unemployed Welshman, who lives in a council flat in Woodside, Wimbledon, was caught by officers having sex with a woman in "full public view" in Wildcroft Road, Putney Heath, for which he was cautioned and not prosecuted.

During a one-hour trial at Wimbledon Magistrates Court on Thursday, Mr Williams successfully argued he had no idea he was in possession of the small quantities of class A drugs, found in wrapped paper.

He told the court the “wraps” must have been left in a pair of combat-style trousers he had picked up outside a charity shop in Tolworth earlier that day.

Williams said the trousers had “about 20 pockets” which he had not checked during the course of the day, and so did not know they contained the drugs.

He said: “Everything was on the front seat of the car, I had emptied the pockets which were full of papers, change and receipts. The drugs were not hidden but they were with that stuff.

“I knew straight away what they were but, when I used to take drugs ten years ago, they came in wraps, but these looked different. They were smaller than a fingernail.

“I thought they could have looked at the receipts and they would have seen I hadn’t been to the places shown on the receipts.”

Williams was cautioned for outraging public decency, but fined £125 by the court for driving without insurance and for failing to comply with a bail condition.

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