Case Title: State v. Haddock

Citation: 101 Ariz. 240, 418 P.2d 577

Docket Number: 

State: arizona

Court: Arizona Supreme Court

Date: 1966-10-05T00:00:00Z

Document:
101 Ariz. 240 (1966) 418 P.2d 577 STATE of Arizona, Plaintiff, v. Lowell Howard HADDOCK, Defendant. No. 1705. Supreme Court of Arizona. In Banc. October 5, 1966. Robert K. Corbin, Maricopa County Atty., by Irwin Harris, Deputy County Atty., Phoenix, for the State. Pasquale R. Cheche, Phoenix, for defendant. UDALL, Justice. On April 6, 1966 the County Attorney of Maricopa County filed an information in Superior Court, charging the defendant Lowell H. Haddock with illegal possession of marijuana, in violation of A.R.S. § 36-1002.05, as amended, 1961. Defendant moved to quash the information on the ground that his alleged possession of approximately 100 marijuana seeds was not a crime within the purview of the statute. In accordance with the provisions of Rule 346, 17 A.R.S. Rules of Criminal Procedure, the trial court has certified the following question: Does the mere possession of the seeds of the marijuana plant constitute a crime under A.R.S. § 36-1002.05? The section provides as follows: There is nothing in Section 36-1002.05, or in any other section of the "Uniform Narcotic Drug Act", (A.R.S. § 36-1001 through § 36-1105), which suggests that the word "marijuana", as used above in the phrase, "or who knowingly possesses any marijuana", was intended to have a meaning other than that normally assigned to the word, and in State v. Curry, 97 Ariz. 191, at 195, 398 P.2d 899, at 901, we quoted with approval the following statement from State v. Navaro, 83 Utah 6, 26 P.2d 955, in which the Supreme Court of Utah held that the word "marijuana" is ordinarily used to refer to the narcotic product of the marijuana plant: The seeds of the marijuana plant are not a narcotic product of the plant. This was clearly established by the following testimony of the state's expert witness, on a cross examination conducted in the justice of the peace court before the defendant was held to answer in the superior court: The fact that marijuana seeds cannot be put to any use as a narcotic drug leads us to the same conclusion expressed by the Court of Criminal Appeals of Texas in Pelham v. State, 164 Tex.Cr.R. 226, at 228, 298 S.W.2d 171, at 173: Since we presume that our legislature, in prohibiting the possession of marijuana in § 36-1002.05, used the term "marijuana" as it is most commonly used, as referring to the narcotic product of the *242 marijuana plant, and since the seeds are not and do not contain the narcotic product and cannot be used in the customary manner to obtain a narcotic effect, we are of the opinion that the legislature did not intend to make possession of marijuana seeds a crime. STRUCKMEYER, C.J., BERNSTEIN, V.C.J., and LOCKWOOD and McFARLAND, JJ., concur.