Overhearing and Oversight
| Published date | 01 March 1997 |
| Author | Colin Tapper |
| DOI | 10.1177/136571279700100205 |
| Date | 01 March 1997 |
| Subject Matter | Case Note |
CASE
NOTE
Overhearing and oversight
by
Colin
Tapper
Professor of Law, University of Oxford, and Fellow of Magdalen
College, Oxford
n
Khan (Sultan)
[1996]
3
All
ER
289
the House of Lords dismissed an appeal
from the Court of Appeal which had itself dismissed an appeal from the
Crown Court in which the accused had been convicted of offences of
being concerned with the importation of drugs. The accused entered the United
Kingdom on the same plane as a cousin who was in possession of a quantity of
heroin. Although none was found in his possession at that time, suspicion had
been aroused. About four months later the accused went to a private house in
Sheffield where he admitted having been involved in the relevant importation.
Unknown both to the occupier
of
those premises and to the accused, the police
had covertly attached a listening device to the house,' and had recorded a private
conversation containing this admission. The identity
of
the accused as the
speaker was not denied, nor that the words amounted to an admission. It was
however argued that the admission should not have been received on the basis:
first, that it was inadmissible as evidence at the trial; and second, that even if
admissible, it ought to have been excluded in the exercise of the judge's
discretion. It is best to consider these arguments separately. It appears not to have
been contended by the defence that the prosecution should have been stayed as
an abuse of process, depending as it did entirely upon evidence obtained by the
deliberate commission of crimes by the law enforcement authorities, but it is
worth considering such a possibility also.
1
It seems to have been conceded that this amounted both to an infringement
of
the civil law
of
trespass and
to
criminal damage contrary to
s.
1
of
the Criminal Damage Act
1971.
162
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL
OF
EVIDENCE
&
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