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1. On 12 February 1967, police squads raided Keith Richard’s house, where Mick Jagger was also present at the time. Drugs were found in the house. The musicians are taken to the police station, but are released pending trial. A scandal breaks out, which – unlike many other scandals – causes the public to take a very negative view of the Rolling Stones, which is only natural – most of the public always takes a negative view of the murderous potion,
   the trial suddenly became a national event. Many were struck by the unusual severity of the sentence – Keith Richard got a year in jail, Mick Jagger got three. (Both were released on bail the next day, though, pending an appeal.) There were a lot of drug cases in the British courts at the time, and as a rule, if they were not about dealers, producers and distributors, but only about “consumers”, the courts gave much more lenient verdicts. The press and the public got the impression that the English establishment decided in this trial not only to punish the famous musicians roughly – “so that others would not be harmed” – but also to settle accounts with them for all their irreverent statements, impertinent behavior and “outrageous” songs. The question arises – if justice is the same for all, doesn’t that not only mean protecting the rights of the poor and disadvantaged, but also equally protecting the rich and wealthy in case of their conflict with the law? The disproportionality of the crime and punishment was so obvious that even the far from liberal Time newspaper ran a famous article (Butterfly on a Wheel) pointing out the unfairness of the sentence. A month later, the Court of Appeal found Richard not guilty and Jagger was given a suspended sentence.

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