Drug conspiracy suspect loses appeal

A 45-year-old Englishman charged with conspiring to import 50,000 ecstasy pills will face trial by jury after an appeals court dismissed his claims as a waste of time.

Steven John Lewis Marsden had been charged in 2006 with importing 14 kilos of pills and trafficking in the drug but the charges were dropped after evidence indicated that the pills did not contain the chemical found in ecstasy as listed in Maltese drug laws. However, they did contain another unscheduled drug.

The Attorney General then issued a bill of indictment charging Mr Marsden with conspiring to deal in ecstasy.

Mr Marsden appealed, claiming that once the drugs he imported were at the time not illegal, the charge was an invention of the Attorney General.

During the compilation of evidence, the Magistrates' Court heard that Mr Marsden had arrived in Malta from Sicily aboard a catamaran on July 9, 2006. Following an intensive search, the police allegedly found the drugs hidden in between the panels of his Mitsubishi Pajero.

The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano, Mr Justice David Scicluna and Mr Justice Joseph Micallef, said that a person can be found guilty of conspiring to import a drug even though the substance may turn out not to be a drug. It depended on what was agreed upon between the conspirators.

The court added that it could not decide whether the drug was "real" or not because that was up to the jury to determine. The judges said that a lot of time had been wasted because the accused had made "manifestly unfounded pleas".