A man’s jail sentence was declared null by an appeal court because a magistrate had ignored a plea bargain, which would have given him less time behind bars.
Adil Hassan Mohammed, 27, from Sudan, filed his appeal last November shortly after he was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for possession of five grams of cannabis. His lawyer argued that the prosecution and defence counsel had agreed on a jail term of one year but he ended up getting three times that.
Lawyer Jose Herrera told Mr Justice Michael Mallia that the plea bargain was noted down in the acts of the proceedings and that the surprise of receiving a considerably longer jail term was counterproductive to the justice system.
It was not fair on the lawyers because they would have advised their client on what was the best way to proceed, especially when considering that it was only a minor amount of drugs involved, he argued.
Mr Justice Mallia said that while the magistrate had the right by law not to follow or agree with the plea bargain, the magistrate had to inform the parties that this was the case so that the lawyer could further advise his client.
“The courts are not there to catch one side or the other on the wrong foot or to take advantage of this and by surprise mete out a punishment that neither party was expecting,” the judge said.
He declared the judgement null and ordered that the proceedings be heard again.
In a statement, lawyer José Herrera, who is also a Labour MP, said he had been bringing up the issue of plea bargaining before Parliament for more than 12 years. When the relevant law was finally brought into action, it fell short of expectations because it was only enforced in the Criminal Court before judges and not magistrates, he said.
He was frustrated that some magistrates had not embraced plea bargaining: “I must reiterate that as logic would have it the vast majority of our magistrates in a de facto manner have embraced plea bargaining.”