A former judge who has been charged with bribery, corruption and trading in influence had told assistant police commissioner Neil Harrison that had it not been for him, drug trafficker Darren Desira would have received a much lower jail term.

Mr Desira was handed down an 18-year jail term in November last year.

Taking the witness stand in the case against the former judge this morning, AC Harrison said that before the investigation into Dr Pace had kicked off, the former judge, then still in office, had asked to see him in his Chambers.

He said that they had spoke about an unrelated subject and the former judge then asked him if he had seen a judgement in which he (Dr Pace), together with another two judges, had ordered the retrial of a convicted drug trafficker.

He also remarked that had it not been for him, Mr Desira would have received a much lower jail term.

Mr Harrison said that at first he did not see anything untoward by these remarks but then realised their importance once the investigation had gotten underway.

Also testifying today was Mr Justice Lawrence Quintano, who denied he had been influenced in any way when he handed Mr Desira the 18-year jail term.

Mr Justice Quintano, testifying from the bench, sitting next to Magistrate Neville Camilleri, who was presiding over the case.

The case was ironically heard in the court room previously occupied by Dr Pace.

A visibly agitated Mr Justice Quintano said that one would be completely wrong if they thought that he had spoken to anybody about this judgement.

“I simply do not have a social life.”

The Darren Desira judgment, he said, was very technical and if anyone had taken the time to read it, he would not be in court testifying.

“I don't go to court and hand down judgments on a whim, I am scrupulous.”

At one point, Mr Justice Quintano was asked to lower his voice by the magistrate.

Explaining why he had decided to settle on jailing Mr Desira for 18 years, he said the jail term was his discretion, there had been an admission, and there were 2.2 kilos of drugs involved. Moreover, there were not enough previous similar cases to carry out a benchmarking exercise. He said he had had to sweat blood to come to a decision.

Mr Justice Quintano insisting that everything was explained in the judgment and he still could not understand why he had to testify about the matter. He said he had been at a standstill for four months because of this.

He said he had never told anyone for how long he was jailing the trafficker for and it was easy for one to get to the figures because he had worked in a mathematical way.

Mr Justice Quintano testified that on November 27 last year, Dr Pace had turned up in his Chambers, which was unusual because judges did not generally do that.

Initially he told the court that he could not remember what was said between them but later he said he had tried to be polite while getting Dr Pace to leave because he was hard pressed to draw up his judgement. He could remember Dr Pace telling him to be careful because this was serious.

During questioning by Giannella de Marco, who is representing Mr Desira, Mr Justice Quintano quite aggressively refused to answer a question about a judgement which he said he had taken into consideration when calibrating punishment.

The lawyer asked Magistrate Camilleri to intervene, at which point the Magistrate told the judge to answer the question. Mr Justice Quintano said he would answer because the magistrate was asking him to.

At this point, lawyer Stefano Filletti, who is appearing for Dr Pace, objected to this line of questioning and said that this was the compilation of evidence against Dr Pace, not the appeal hearing of Darren Desira and there were no charges filed against Dr Quintano.

Dr de Marco retorted that their job as lawyers had been already made very difficult because they had to appear before Mr Justice Quintano and this was made very evident from the attitude displayed by Dr Quintano.

She also accused Dr Filletti and Dr Joe Mifsud., who is also representing Dr Pace, of acting maliciously.

She said this case which is very worrying: “this is like the mafia in power” where the two other men charged with bribing Dr Pace had then used the fact that Mr Desira had been jailed for 18 years as a bargaining chip.

The case continues.