Chief Justice nullifies jurors' verdict on sanity

A verdict by jurors who had found that a man was of sound mind when he allegedly fatally stabbed his estranged wife in her hospital bed has been declared null after the Court of Criminal Appeal found that irregularities during the trial may have influenced the decision.

Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano, presiding over the appeal court, ruled that comments made by the prosecution during the rejoinder should not have been permitted by the judge presiding over Anthony Schembri's trial.

The Chief Justice heard that on September 30, 2005, Mr Schembri was charged with murdering his wife, Doris, when he stabbed her as she lay in bed at St Luke's Hospital the previous day.

The compilation proceedings in the case had been interrupted by defence submissions that their client was insane at the time of the alleged stabbing. A team of three psychiatrists was appointed to draw up a report that concluded Mr Schembri was insane at the time.

However, the Attorney General did not agree with the report's conclusion and, on January 22, 2007, he filed an application requesting that the issue of insanity be decided by a panel of jurors.

On May 21, the jurors returned a six-three verdict concluding that Mr Schembri was of sound mind at the time of the incident. The following day, Mr Justice Giannino Caruana Demajo, sitting in the Criminal Court, declared him of sound mind and ordered the continuation of the compilation of evidence against him.

Mr Schembri appealed the decision on three main points. First, that the jurors' verdict was completely wrong as the report and testimony of three psychiatrists (claiming he was insane at the time of the stabbing) had not been contradicted by other evidence.

Secondly, the defence had proven its case to the level of probability required by law. Thirdly, Mr Schembri argued that the judge had prejudiced his case with decisions he took.

He noted that the judge had turned down the defence's request that a part of his (Mr Schembri's) statement to the police - in which he made reference to an incident in 1991 when he stabbed his wife after she insulted him - be eliminated from the script available to jurors.

The defence had then asked that, if the jurors were to be informed about the 1991 incident, they should also be informed that Mr Schembri had been declared to have been in a state of insanity at the time. However, the judge, while allowing reference to the 1991 case to be made, banned any reference to the declaration of insanity.

The Chief Justice ruled that the judge was justified in his decisions as the law did not allow jurors to be informed that an accused had been previously tried over another case.

However, the defence had argued, when addressing jurors in the rejoinder, that Attorney General representative Anthony Barbara referred to the 1991 case and gave the impression that Mr Schembri was not insane at the time. Dr Barbara said that "... so what he did not manage to do in 1991 he succeeded in doing in 2005. Was he in a state of insanity as well in 1991? We don't know."

This scenario painted by the prosecution was different from the truth as the Attorney General had never contested the report claiming that Mr Schembri was in a state of insanity in the 1991 incident, the defence argued.

The court ruled that the prosecutor had subtly suggested that in 1991 there had been an attempted murder when this was never established legally. His words also gave the impression that Mr Schembri knew what he was doing.

The Chief Justice noted that the jurors' "delicate role" was to determine whether to give weight to Mr Schembri's statement - that alone did not indicate insanity - or the report and testimony of the three psychiatrists. Given this scenario, it was unfair of the prosecution to open the doors to speculation as to what effectively took place in 1991 and about Mr Schembri's mental state at the time.

The court should have immediately stopped the prosecution and explained to jurors that what happened in 1991 was only relevant as a motive, that they had no evidence of a previous attempted murder and that Mr Schembri's state of sanity in 1991 was irrelevant to that trial.

The court ruled that there had been an irregularity during the trial that may have influenced the jurors' verdict. The Chief Justice thus declared the verdict and judgement null and ordered that the case be tried again.

Lawyers Edward Gatt and Anġlu Farrugia appeared for Mr Schembri.