Two men who faced criminal proceedings over the possession of a cheque belonging to a third party have been awarded €700 each in compensation after a Constitutional Court found that their right to a fair hearing within a reasonable timeframe had been breached.
The compensation was awarded despite finding both the prosecution and the two defendants responsible for the excessive delays.
Raymond Bonnici, 55, from Marsa and Ronald Urry, 50, from Paola, had been charged with having been in possession of a cheque amounting to some €217.45 (Lm93.35), and belonging to a certain Antonia Dalli.
A major part of the proceedings consisted of postponements for court decisions and then for the final judgement. The court heard that some sittings were held five years apart.
In November 2013, the two men were acquitted of the charges, with Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras ruling that the charges had been time barred by some 15 years.
The men took their complaint about excessive delays to the Constitutional Court, presided by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri and judges Giannino Caruana Demajo and Noel Cuschieri.
They argued that their human rights had been breached because of the massive delay and that a large part of the delay stemmed from waiting for judgment.
The Constitutional Court upheld their complaint although, while reprimanding the prosecution for its part in the delay, it also placed some of the blame on the defendants who had failed to appear in court on several occasions and on others appeared in court but without their lawyers, leading to several deferments.
In its decision, the Constitutional Court noted that between June 1992 and June 2000, the court held no less than 50 sittings during which practically nothing was heard. On one occasion, the sitting was postponed because the court had no messenger to deliver the files.
Moreover, between July 2000 and December 2009, the court called the case 48 times but nothing happened because either the defendants or the prosecuting officer failed to appear. More sittings were held until 2013 when the case was transferred to another magistrate, with the case finally being decided in November that year.
The Constitutional Court said that although the men had contributed to the breach of their own right for a fair hearing within a reasonable time, the prosecution and the court were also to blame for failing to take the necessary measures to ensure that this basic human right was respected.
It, therefore, compensated the two men €700 as moral damages for the uncertainty, frustration and anxiety they had to endure during this 23-year wait with a criminal case hanging over their head.
Lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri and Angie Muscat represented the two men.
Mr Urry is presently facing separate criminal proceedings over the 2013 murder of Matthew Zahra, a taxi driver found buried in a field in Qajjenza, Birzebbuga, close to the bodies of father-and-son Mario Camilleri, l-Imniehru, and his son Mario.