ABSTRACT
Lord Ackner: ... Each of those requests was, of course, evidence of the state of mind of the person making the request. He wished to be supplied with drugs and thought that the appellant would so supply him. It was not evidence of the fact that the appellant had supplied or could or would supply the person making the request. But the state of mind of the person making the request was not an issue at the trial; accordingly evidence of his request was irrelevant and therefore inadmissible. If the prosecution had sought to call any of the persons who made such requests, merely to give evidence of the making of the requests, in order to establish their appetite for drugs and their belief that such appetite would be satisfied by the appellant, such evidence could not have been properly admitted. Indeed, Miss Goddard QC for the Crown essentially conceded this. The evidence of the requests were, she submits, not being tendered in order to establish that the person making the request believed that the appellant was a supplier of drugs. She accepted that the state of mind of the person or persons making the request was irrelevant. That must include not only his or their beliefs but his or their appetites for the drug, the ‘potential market’ referred to by my noble and learned friend Lord Browne-Wilkinson in his speech, which I have had the privilege of reading in draft. Miss Goddard maintained that the evidence of the request for drugs to be supplied by the appellant tended to show that the premises at which the request was made were being used as a source of supply of drugs and that the supplier (ie that person who had been supplying the drugs) was the appellant. The certified question confines itself to a single request. Miss Goddard accepts that a single request would not provide evidence either that the premises were being used as a source of supply of drugs or that the appellant was the supplier. It could only be evidence of the state of mind of the person making the request. I can see no basis in logic or principle for validly contending that an additional request or requests would fundamentally alter the situation. The request or requests, in terms which I have described, and which were so referred to by the learned judge in his summing-up, contain neither an express nor an implied assertion that the person making the inquiry has either obtained drugs from the premises, or from the appellant in the past, or has been told by the appellant (or his duly authorised agent) that he, the appellant, would satisfy his requirements (the ‘potential market’) for drugs if he phoned or called at the premises. Indeed the request or requests do not contain any factual assertion. They ask a question of the appellant: will you supply me with drugs? – thus by inference suggesting that they believed the appellant would supply what they requested.
