Former justice minister Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici on Wednesday expressed concern that the government intended to introduce the practice whereby court proceedings would carry on and judgments given even in the absence of the accused.
Speaking during the debate in second reading of the Bill amending various criminal laws, the Nationalist MP said this was diametrically opposed to local legal practice as established over the centuries.
He called on Justice Minister Owen Bonnici to withdraw the clause in committee stage and not to heed the advice of techncial experts who wanted to expedite matters in court at all costs.
Dr Mifsud Bonnici said these clauses undermined the fundamental right of a charged person to protect himself from the power of the State.
He also expressed opposition to the proposed clause where no subsequent notifications needed to be forwarded to the accused in criminal proceedings once the first notification had been delivered.
Sometimes measures are needed to help a person reform
Earlier, Dr Mifsud Bonnici congratulated his successor for having been courageous enough to push, through this Bill, those amendments that he (Dr Mifsud Bonnici) had presented three years ago but which Parliament had rejected.
Describing the Bill as “positive”, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said suspended sentences and community service orders had been strengthened during the previous legislature.
There was not enough knowledge of new tools such as these and probation. While imprisonment and fines could serve as effective deterrents, sometimes measures were needed to help a person reform. The MP asked the minister whether amendments to the system of agreed judgments (commonly referred to as “plea bargaining”) would also be made applicable to the Court of Magistrates.
It seemed that the principal amendments were being addressed only to the Criminal Court.
Speaking about the drug khat, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said Parliament could have legislated against it three years ago. The United Kingdom did so recently and communities spoke of how this substance was destroying families, especially Somali ones.
He praised the introduction of articles that would consider as a crime any act of aggression or war not authorised by the United Nations.
On harassment, Dr Mifsud Bonnici said that a recent UK judgment interpreted it as also stalking. He suggested the government take note of this judgment and redefine harassment.
He called on the minister to avoid presenting amendments which specified the amount of drugs over which court action could be taken.
This would make it more difficult for the police to proceed against drug traffickers.
Winding up the debate, Minister Bonnici said the court system needed radical reform. One was cut off from reality if one was happy with the existing situation.
Sentencing in absentia would be qualified and would not become law immediately but only after a new IT system was in place and fully functional.
He said that safeguards would be provided for genuine cases where notifications were not presented in time.
The Maltese courts were already accepting sentences delivered in absentia in foreign courts. It was an injustice for witnesses to be called in vain because the charged person failed to turn up in court. Changes to the proposed amendments could be made in committee stage.
The details specified in the clause on drug offences were needed to limit the Attorney General’s discretion as instructed by the European Court.
Earlier, Minister Bonnici told Parliament that he wanted to offer new hope to young offenders to escape from drugs while giving them an opportunity to reform.
He was replying to remarks by Nationalist MP Jason Azzopardi who had accused the minister of trying to score political points by reading an e-mail sent to him by a young offender convicted by the courts. Dr Azzopardi had challenged the minister to declare whether he wanted to pardon this young drug offender.
The young offender complained in his email that after managing to get back on the right track he was being sent to prison because his case had taken nine years to be decided.
Dr Bonnici said he stood to lose rather than gain on such an issue. He was surely not going to score any political points. It was the law and not the judiciary that was at fault on this judgment.
This matter strengthened his resolve to give the courts the right tools to help genuine drug victims take the path of reform.
Dr Bonnici said a number of amendments had originally formed part of a Bill which had been presented during the previous legislature but which were never made law. Some of the amendments brought Malta in line with its EU obligations, he said, adding that the transposition of legal amendments under the Stockholm programme was at an advanced stage.
He said that more rights would be given to persons arrested on suspicion of having committed a crime.
Concluding, Dr Bonnici said a third Bill proposing further “important reforms” to criminal acts would be presented.
The Bill was unanimously approved.