Edgar Joseph Jr. SCJ:

This appellant was convicted for trafficking, on his own behalf, in a dangerous drug, to wit, 1.5 kilograms of cannabis comprised in 2,700 rolls of dried plant material, in contravention of s. 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, and sentenced to death, in the High Court at Taiping before Mr. Judicial Commissioner Abdul Malik bin Haji Ishak, sitting alone.

Subject to proof beyond reasonable doubt that the subject matter of the charge was cannabis within the meaning of s. 2 of the Act - a point which we shall be discussing in a moment - there was evidence, which if it was believed made out the guilt of the appellant.

There was evidence by the appellant to the contrary; his evidence being that at all material times, he was a police informer, assisting the police in collecting evidence to expose or flush out members of a drug syndicate operating in the Taiping area, including a certain Khalid. In furtherance of this purpose, on the date and at the time and place stated in the charge he had posed as a supplier in drug dealing transactions with a person he believed to be a buyer of the cannabis the subject matter of the charge, but who, unbeknown to him then, and as events turned out, was really a police officer cast in the role of an agent provocateur, and that despite this, the police had pulled a double cross on him by framing a case against him. In other words, the appellant was saying that this was a case of the would be biter being bitten or the biter bit, to quote the idiom which is the moral of Aesop's fable, "The Viper and the File".

When we interrupted Counsel for the appellant and asked him whether he could suggest any possible reason why the police should have done such a vicious thing to the appellant and, indeed, a thing which would be against the interest of the police since it might well have resulted in the drying up of other sources of information in the future, he was at a complete loss to answer our query.

In a long and careful judgment with which we could find no fault, the Judge carefully weighed the evidence adduced by the defence and arrived at the conclusion that it raised no reasonable doubt either as to the truth of the case for the prosecution or the guilt of the appellant. Such criticisms as were levelled at the judgment by Counsel for the appellant amounted to no more than that it was not as favourable to the appellant as Counsel would have liked it to have been.

We must now return to the only point which caused us some concern and this revolved around the question whether it was sufficiently proved that the subject matter of the charge was cannabis within the meaning of s. 2 of the Act . In support of his submission regarding this part of the case, Counsel relied heavily on a recent judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Leong Bon Huat v. PP [1993] 3 CLJ 603 . In that case, the accused had been convicted for trafficking in a dangerous drug, to wit, cannabis weighing 793.85g., contained in a bulk of dried leaves. The evidence of the chemist in that case suffered from many infirmities which are conveniently summarised in the following passage in the judgment at p. 14 C to D and which reads as follows:

It will be seen that he (the chemist) made no mention of the results of his physical examination; for example, he did not say that the plant material was all of the same type and physical features as that of cannabis; nor did he say what were the results of his microscopic examination. Did he notice any resi n in the plant material? If so, in what quantity was it present? Nor did he tell the Court as to what were the tests he conducted using chemical methods; for example, did he resort to the Dequenois Levine test and/or the thin layer chromatography test? If so, what were the results of those tests?

In the event, the Court concluded that the samples of the plant material upon which the chemist had carried out the chemical tests were inadequate, having rega