A jury acquitted San Francisco resident Eric Meoli of possessing magic mushrooms after finding that he could not have knowingly possessed them because he forgot they were in his backpack. Meoli, a cannabis club worker, was stopped on May 25 for riding his bicycle on a BART station platform when police searched his backpack and found the mushrooms. He had accepted the mushrooms six months earlier in exchange for $10 of cannabis that he gave to a “hippy in Golden Park” who suffered from insomnia. According to Kimberly Lutes-Koths, Meoli’s public defender, Meoli put the mushrooms in his backpack six months ago and then forgot all about them.
Prosecutors couldn’t prove Meoli had knowledge of the mushrooms when he was arrested, which is a requirement for conviction of possession. Federal and state drug possession laws make it illegal to willfully possess illegal controlled substances.
“Willfully” is legally defined as “committed voluntarily and purposely, with the specific intent to do something; voluntarily and intentionally assisting or advising another to do something that the person knows disobeys or disregards the law. A person does not act willfully if the person acts as a result of a good faith misunderstanding of the requirements of the law.”
Because the mushrooms had been in Meoli’s backpack for six months and he forgot about them, he could not have “willfully” possessed them, argued Lutes-Koths. In Meoli’s case, the jury was instructed that if circumstantial evidence leads to two different conclusions, one pointing to guilt and one pointing to innocence, the jury must adopt the one that points to innocence.
After acquittal, Lutes-Koths stated “some people think my argument was unique, but it just seemed logical to me.” The interesting thing in this case is that the jury actually bought her logical argument of “I forgot they were in there,” a popular one that many defendants have attempted without success.
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