Marketing Assignment

Problem Question (2007 Modified):

Tom (28) and Sheena (25) are young British tourists who have come to Australia to have a camping holiday. Upon arrival at Sydney airport they hire a campervan and intend to do a 3 month long tour around Australia.

They have some friends living in Sydney so they plan to spend their first night visiting these friends before setting off on their trip. Their friends live in a small terrace in Surry Hills and there is no room for Tom and Sheena to sleep there so after a convivial dinner at which some marijuana is smoked, Tom and Sheena retire to bed in their van at shortly after midnight. The van is parked off the street in a small driveway in front of their friends’ terrace house.

Feeling frisky they light a candle and engage in sexual intercourse on top of the bed in the van, unaware that the curtains are flimsy. In fact, with the assistance of the light from the candle, their activities can be seen from outside the van quite clearly by anyone who happens to be passing.

Unluckily for Tom and Sheena there has been a street robbery nearby and two plain clothes detectives happen to be walking down the backstreet at 1am. Noticing the candle light in the van the two detectives stop to investigate. They spend some five minutes standing outside the van looking in the van window.

A movement outside the van catches Tom’s eye and he breaks off from sexual intercourse with Sheena to pull aside the curtain and peer out.  He spots the two men looking in the van window and abuses them saying: “Fuck off you perverts –go to a strip club if you want a show –you wankers”.

The two detectives are both embarrassed and offended by Tom’s abuse. They smell the van reeking of marijuana smoke and force their way in through the ajar door and say they need to search. They notice that Tom is wearing a nightshirt that bears the slogan “COPS IS C**TS” printed over the picture of a British police helmet worn by a pig.

A quick search of the van turns up a plastic bag hidden in a cupboard in the van. Later analysis shows the bag contains a mixture which has 200 grams of cannabis leaf mixed with 200 grams of another substance. The police also confiscate Tom’s jacket. Later analysis reveals minute quantities of marijuana in the pocket, mixed in with fluff, tobacco and other waste materials. Finally the two male detectives say that there needs to be a strip search, and commence searching both of them in plain view of the open door. They both maintain that they are innocent and the police ask them both to open their mouths to see if there is anything inside. Nothing is found.

Tom and Sheena deny any knowledge of the marijuana in either the plastic bag or the jacket. Tom says: “We have got nothing to do with it. We only picked up the van today and it is a hire van. The dope must have been hidden or left there by the last people who rented the van. As for my jacket, it has been hanging up all over the place in public places in Thailand and Indonesia over the six months it took us to get here. Anyone could have put stuff in the pocket.”

The two officers do not buy this story and proceed to arrest them both.