Loreno Carlo Riaviz v. Her Majesty’s Advocate [2017] HCJAC 36

Note of appeal against conviction:- On 24 March 2016, at Glasgow High Court, the appellant was found guilty after trial of a charge of being concerned in the supply of diamorphine contrary to section 4(3)(b) of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971. He had two previous convictions for Class A drug dealing in 2005 and 2007 and was sentenced to the statutory minimum of 7 years imprisonment. The appellant appealed against his conviction on the ground that various labeled productions referred to during the trial were not adequately identified as either being in the possession of the appellant or on a table within his house, on 15 May 2015 when a search warrant was executed in relation to the appellant’s home address. At the trial objection was taken to the evidence of DC Greig Baxter of the Statement of Opinion unit of the police who had produced an opinion in relation to the various items said to have been recovered during the investigation. A number of quantities of drugs had been recovered during the course of the investigation including:- (1) Crown label 7 was a  Kinder egg holder containing a 6.78 gram package identified as a quarter ounce deal of heroin, with a value of £240 and 1.72 and 1.97 gram bags were described as sixteenth ounce deals of heroin worth about £70 each; (2) Crown Label 8 was a quarter ounce deal of heroin; (3) Crown Label 16 was a sixteenth ounce deal of heroin found on JW (a female in the company of the appellant who stated that the appellant had given her the drugs); (4) Crown Labels 19 and 20 consisted of tenner bag deals of heroin. It was DC Baxter’s opinion that the quantities of heroin found were excessive for personal use and indicative of onward sale or supply. It was contended on behalf of the appellant that the trial judge erred in repelling an objection to the admissibility of that opinion evidence as there was no evidence to link his evidence with the labels produced in court. Here the court refused the appeal. The court noted that the officers who seized the various items spoke to putting the items into evidence bags, sealing the bags and writing a description of the items seized on the bags and then signing the sealed bags. The court further noted that the content of the various labels was agreed by joint minute and that DC Baxter, in providing his opinion, did so in relation to the descriptions of the items seized rather than the labeled productions themselves. The court stated that there was no basis for objecting to the evidence and the inferences to be drawn from the possession of such quantities. The seized items had been placed in sealed bags by the relevant police officers as was evidenced from the descriptions/names on the labels which were spoken to in court by the relevant police officer and there was no basis to conclude that the items produced in court were not those recovered during the course of the search.