JUDGMENTBY: EDGAR JOSEPH JR FCJ (DELIVERING THE GROUNDS OF JUDGMENT OF THE COURT)

EDGAR JOSEPH JR FCJ (DELIVERING THE GROUNDS OF JUDGMENT OF THE COURT) This appellant was convicted upon a charge that he did on 11 March 1989, in front of the Country Fried Chicken Restaurant, at Jalan Skudai, Johor Bahru, traffick, on his own behalf, in a dangerous drug, to wit, heroin, weighing 112.94g, in contravention of s 39B(1)(a) of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952 (the Act) and was sentenced to death.

Before us, the conviction had been attacked on a number of grounds but, in the event, we considered that the only point of substance argued by counsel for the appellant concerned the failure of the prosecution to either call, or at least make available to the defence, a witness who, it was said, for a certain time was just an informer but later forsook that role and assumed the mantle of an agent provocateur, thereby occasioning a miscarriage of justice. For brevity and convenience, we shall, unless the context otherwise requires, refer to this witness as the informer.

Now, the whole of the material evidence had been closely and critically examined before us with great care and it is unnecessary t