The heirs of a prisoner who died two decades ago after being administered a double dose of methadone has filed a case against Malta in the European Court of Human Rights.

The heirs are claiming that the State was to blame for the negligent death of Carlos Chetcuti in February 1995 and was therefore responsible for the breach of his right to life – the most supreme in the list of human rights.

The Times of Malta report on the death of prisoner Carlos Chetcuti, 25, in jail in February 1995.

They are claiming violation of the protection to life since a State had to ensure a proper system of care and could not actively participate in the killing of a person.

Mr Chetcuti, who was 25 when he died, was kicking a drug habit and was receiving methadone in prison at the time. He died of pulmonary oedema, which was compatible with fatal methadone poisoning. He had been administered a dose of 40cc methadone instead of 20cc, which had been previously administered to him.

The prison authorities consistently denied responsibility for years but in October 2010, following a lawsuit by Mr Chetcuti’s late father, Vince, Mr Justice Philip Sciberras determined they had been negligent and awarded Mr Chetcuti’s heirs €53,500 in damages.

The judge had commented that it should not to have taken the death of a prison inmate for a radical change to take place in the administration of the prisons and the general well-being of inmates.

They were left completely clueless as to the required dosage

But this was reduced to €38,000 by an appeals court, which found the first figure “excessive”.

The appeals court ruled that the life expectancy and working life of a drug addict could not be as long as that of a person who did not have the habit.

The court, therefore, reduced the multiplier used in the compensation formula from 35 years to 25 years.

Medical experts, who testified in proceedings before the courts, concluded that the care afforded in prison to drug dependent inmates was “sporadic and unprofessional”. No exact records of medical treatments were kept, nor was there constant monitoring of inmates who were receiving treatment.

The procedures employed in the management of drug prescriptions and of patients receiving methadone maintenance treatment were poor and ill defined, the experts concluded.

Earlier this year, in a separate case filed by Mr Chetcuti’s aunt Jane Agius seeking damages for breach of human rights, a Constitutional Court ruled that the right to life had been breached. It awarded the heirs €5,000 in moral damages but afforded no further remedy.

Lawyers David Camilleri and Joseph Gatt escalated their legal arguments to the Strasbourg court this week, asking it to find that the Maltese State violated Mr Chetcuti’s right to life.

They referred to a detailed legal report filed during civil proceedings, which had revealed “abominable deficiencies” in the Maltese prison system. Moreover, they argued that the people who administered the methadone were not even qualified nurses and the matter was left in the hands of prison warders, who were not qualified in the treatment of drug-dependent inmates.

“Not only were they not the right people to perform this onerous task, but since there was no register of drug-dependent inmates, they were left completely clueless as to the required dosage for each inmate,” the lawyers argued in the case filed before the ECHR.

They further contended that Mr Chetcuti was “doubly vulnerable” as he was not only a person in custody but was also a drug addict. “The State’s responsibility and obligation to protect Mr Chetcuti was therefore even more stringent than it ordinarily is with respect to people in custody,” they argued.

matthew.xuereb@timesofmalta.com