Three years jail for wife's stabbing

A man was yesterday jailed for three years after jurors cleared him of trying to kill his wife by stabbing her but found him guilty of seriously injuring her when he was in a state of mental excitement in consequence of which he was incapable of reflecting.

After almost three hours of deliberation, jurors found Paul Caruana, 34, of Zejtun, not guilty by six votes to three of the attempted murder of his wife Sandra. They, however, found him guilty, also by six votes to three, of seriously injuring her in a crime that was excusable by the fact that he was in a state of mental agitation.

The jurors unanimously found Mr Caruana guilty of the possession of a knife without a licence and unanimously not guilty of the possession of a weapon at the time of the commission of the crime, suggesting they did not believe the knife he had was actually a weapon.

The prosecution had argued that when, on June 12, 2003, Mr Caruana got in a car with his wife, who had turned up outside his Zejtun garage to speak to him, he produced a knife and stabbed her with it with the intention of killing her.

But in his evidence on Tuesday, Mr Caruana said that when the incident happened he was in a state of psychological turmoil triggered by the fact that he suspected his wife was cheating on him and that he had been threatened with death by her siblings just a day before.

He said that on the day of the incident he only took the knife in the car because he had just used it to open a bag of pigeon feed.

When his wife and her sister told him they would not let him out of the car, before he gave up his children and his home, he panicked and brandished the knife to try to get out of the car.

After the foreman read out the verdict, Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono heard lawyers Emmanuel Mallia and Giannella Caruana Curran, for Mr Caruana, make submissions on punishment.

The lawyers said their client had a clean criminal record and no pending court cases. He always worked for his family and was now living with his wife who had forgiven him. Besides, they said, he never laid a hand on her until two days before the incident.

They added that Mr Caruana was willing to plead guilty to the charge of grievous bodily harm excusable by his mental state (the charge of which he was found guilty) and had even tried to plea bargain with the Attorney General about this.

The verdict reached was the minimum one allowed by law and, in light of all this, the lawyers called on the judge to be merciful with their client and hand down a suspended jail term.

Senior Counsel to the Republic Mark Said noted that, although there had been attempts at plea bargaining, the punishment had not been discussed.

It was true that Mr Caruana was caught up in an uncomfortable and pathetic situation but, in light of what happened, he had made a big mistake.

Dr Said added that when a person assaulted someone with a weapon he deserved an effective jail term.

Mr Justice Galea Debono noted that, according to the calculations made by the prosecution, Mr Caruana was facing between five months and three years and four months imprisonment.

After taking note of the circumstances of the case, the judge referred to case law which stated that, as a general rule, violent acts were to be punished with an effective jail term, especially if a weapon was used.

The judge also quoted a judgment concluding that, even when a person was found guilty of committing a crime when in a state of mental agitation, "there is still in every human being a residual capacity for self-control, which the exigencies of a given situation may call for".

The judge jailed Mr Caruana for three years and ordered that the time spent in preventive custody be deducted.