Welshman Daniel Holmes has appealed a recent court decision and is insisting that the harsh punishment granted to him for cultivating cannabis was in breach of his right to a fair trial.
Mr Holmes - who was jailed for 10 years and six months and fined 23,000 for cultivating about a kilo of cannabis - listed several examples of lesser punishments handed down in other cases involving much more drugs.
On October 3, a Constitutional court awarded Mr Holmes €7,000 in compensation for violation of his right to a fair hearing. The court ruled that the criminal proceedings against Mr Holmes had taken an unreasonable length of time and he had been exposed to arbitrary punishment.
In the appeal he insisted that he had been deprived of the right to legal assistance during police interrogation and was deprived of police files according to the rule of disclosure.
He was also deprived of the right to adequate legal assistance. The previous court had noted that there were flaws with the legal aid system as lawyers were stretched thin and underpaid.
In Gozo, where Mr Holmes' case was heard, there were only two legal aid lawyers available and none were specialised in the complexity of Mr Holmes' case. These shortfalls in the system resulted in inadequate legal counsel.
He once again challenged the Attorney General's discretion to decide whether a drug case was heard in the Magistrates Court or during a trial by jury - with the latter allowing for a much harsher punishment. The previous court had ruled that this was in breach the European Convention which provided for protection against arbitrary punishment. However, the court failed to provide a remedy in its judgment.
Mr Holmes also argued that the law failed to distinguish between cultivation for personal use and to sell.
The facts of the case go back to June 2006 when Mr Holmes released a statement to the police explaining that the cannabis plants found in his possession were for his own personal use.
On June 21, 2006, he was arraigned before the Gozo courts and charged with importation, cultivation, possession and selling of cannabis. The police claimed that Mr Holmes was found to have just over a kilo of dried cannabis and 0.24 grammes of cannabis resin with a total value of €11,694.44.
Mr Holmes was assisted by a legal aid lawyer who was substituted by another legal aid lawyer in July 2007. But in September 2008 Mr Holmes appointed another lawyer who was not on legal aid.
The Attorney General issued the trial charges against Mr Holmes in January 2010 and the trial by jury was set for November 9 of the same year.
Once again Mr Holmes was represented by a non legal aid lawyer. The trial was put off without a date and without any reason for this being registered in the court records, and was later appointed for November 21, 2011 on which date Mr Holmes admitted to the charges against him.
On November 24, 2011 Mr Holmes was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years imprisonment and fined €23,000. This judgment was confirmed by the Court of Criminal Appeal on October 31, 2013.