The exaggerated delays in court proceedings were totally unacceptable, violating the fundamental right to a fair hearing in a reasonable time, Justice Parliamentary Secretary Owen Bonnici said yesterday.
The Government would no longer tolerate such a situation, he said, noting that in countries where the judicial system was set up much later than in Malta proceedings took six months, whereas here they went on for six years.
Thus, one of the very first decisions taken by the Labour Government was to appoint a commission, headed by former European Court of Human Rights judge Giovanni Bonello, to make recommendations for a complete overhaul of the judicial system.
He said that the commission would publish its final report by the end of next month, with the intention of starting the reform by the end of the year.
On Monday, a Maltese court awarded Joseph Lebrun €6,000 in compensation after it ruled that proceedings that started in 2005, in connection with a drug trafficking case, had been unjustifiably prolonged.
Mr Lebrun is pleading not guilty of trafficking seven kilograms of heroin.
Dr Bonnici described this case as “a snapshot of how penal procedures are not working well, thus leading to breaches in the fundamental right for a fair hearing in a reasonable time”.
As a general rule, nothing happens
He said that the Government would not point fingers at members of the judiciary because it strongly believed that, fundamentally, they had the fair administration of justice at heart. On the other hand, the judgment in question further justified the need to overhaul the judicial system.
Dr Bonnici said that an analysis of the sentence in the Lebrun case shed more light on the “symptoms of the disease”, which had taken over the judicial system.
One of them was the practice of having only one sitting a month, with Dr Bonnici citing part of the sentence saying that “as a general rule, nothing happens”. He also remarked that even though 55 sittings were held since 2005, witnesses were only heard on four occasions.
Dr Bonnici said that court experts were not doing the assignments given to them, even after several years.
He complained about “needless” assignments being given to court experts.
He also mentioned the practice of the prosecution not producing the summons served to witnesses.
He was critical of what he termed as unjustified postponements by the Attorney General and the court’s failure to step in when proceedings were taking unjustifiably long.
Dr Bonnici also hit out at the practice of referring cases to the Constitutional Court frivolously because these prolonged proceedings unnecessarily.
Earlier this year, a study carried out by the European Commission, known as the EU Justice Scoreboard, concluded that court proceedings in Malta take much longer than in other member states.