AEB & ORS, R. v [2024] EWCA CRIM 1320, NOVEMBER 1, 2024.
FACTS: The accused were charged with money laundering charges involving Apple gift cards. During the investigation, the police sought documents from Apple. After receiving document and making additional queries, Apple conducted a search and provided the police with a spreadsheet setting out information concerning the Apple gift cards at the center of the alleged offences.
At the trial, the Crown sought to introduce the spreadsheet as evidence for the truth of its contents. The trial judge held that the spreadsheet constituted hearsay and ruled that it was inadmissible.
The Crown was granted leave to appeal from this ruling.
HELD: The appeal was allowed and the trial judge’s ruling reversed. The Court of Appeal held that the information the Crown sought to disclose was not hearsay because it there was no “intervention of a human mind, such as to transform the information in the spreadsheet from raw data admissible as real evidence to hearsay” (at paragraphs 34 to 36):
As we have noted, it is common ground between the parties – and we agree – that the raw data held by Apple were recorded automatically when the relevant transactions were carried out. Inevitably, the raw data would be stored in vast quantities in a form which could not sensibly be placed before a jury. Evidence may only be admitted in a criminal trial if it is relevant to the issues in the case: it was therefore incumbent upon the prosecution to identify the computerised records which were relevant. On the evidence before the judge, that is what happened here: the prosecution identified the reference numbers of gift cards which were thought to be relevant to the prosecution case, and Apple personnel used an internal tool (which we take to be some form of search facility) to select and extract the records of transactions involving those gift cards, transactions involving the subsequent use or exchange of those gift cards, and transactions involving other uses of the same credit cards.
The central question in this appeal is whether that process of using the computer to search, select and extract a sub-set of the overall data stored in the computer involved the intervention of a human mind, such as to transform the information in the spreadsheet from raw data admissible as real evidence to a hearsay statement admissible only in accordance with the statutory provisions. We have no doubt, on the evidence before the judge, that no such transformation occurred. Raw data which is merely selected and extracted from a larger body of raw data is still the raw data. The human decisions taken in setting the parameters of such a selection and extraction process, and/or in setting the search terms and filters used to select and extract the relevant data, and/or in choosing how best to present the selected and extracted data in a format intelligible to a jury, might in some circumstances be the subject of challenge on a different ground, for example relevance or fairness; but those decisions cannot in themselves alter the character of the selected and extracted material as raw data. It may be noted that in Spiby, the relevant information, selected and extracted from the overall data recorded by the telephone machinery, was that relating to calls made from particular phones within the hotel, during a particular period of time, relevant to the police investigation. The court did not suggest that the process of selection and extraction had altered the character of the raw data.
On the evidence here, there had been no human intervention which in any way altered, or added to, the raw data selected and extracted from the overall body of raw data. The selected and extracted information therefore continued to be real evidence, in accordance with the principle stated in Spiby.
