Lee Livesey & Others [2019] EWCA Crim 877

Livesey, Morfitt & McCaffrey were convicted after trial and the latter two sentenced to 18 years’ imprisonment and 22 years’ imprisonment respectively. Livesey was convicted after a separate trial, and also pleaded guilty to a further similar offence, he was sentenced to a total of 13 years and 6 months’ imprisonment.

Morfitt and McCaffrey sought leave to appeal their convictions. The first ground was that evidence of previous convictions of non-defendants was wrongly admitted. These were names of people within an address book belonging to a co-accused who pleaded guilty. Morfitt also submitted that the judge failed to adequately present his defence during the summing-up.

The prosecution asserted that the address book was, in essence, a business directory. The list of 73 people was predominantly male and included next of kin details and inmate reference numbers, 40 on the list had drug related convictions including supply, 26 had convictions relating to supply of class A drugs, 38 had convictions for serious offences and 21 had convictions for possession of weapons. The prosecution argued that the convictions were highly relevant having regard to the nature of the conspiracy, that is the organised drug distribution at a very high level.
McCaffrey argued it was a disguised attempt to pursue a defendant’s bad character application, that should have been made under s101 and it would not have succeeded. It was also submitted the book was not relevant as it was simply the social contacts of a co-accused.

The application for leave to appeal conviction was refused. The judge analysed the prosecution case and set out the competing arguments with care, the fact that such a large number of the contacts had convictions for drug dealing and associated offences was a factor in rebutting the suggestion it was simply a social contact book. The Judge was entitled to find a jury could conclude the book was a resource to be utilised in pursuance of the criminal conspiracy. The summing-up was also considered, “a summing-up is a summary. It is not supposed to deal with every piece of evidence”.

No arguable merit was found in the renewed applications for permission to appeal against the sentences and permission was refused.