LIVING BY THE SWORD

Apologies if you’ve missed me and all that – all the usual excuses can be trotted out, the heat, the fact that so many people seemed to be enjoying themselves on the previous blog, sniping at each other about planning and related issues, all that stuff, but the fact, is, time and inclination didn’t match up, and I had my weekly column to combine with setting off for a longer than usual long weekend up North.

Anyway, here we are again, with some words designed to irritate, amuse and annoy. I suppose, given my exalted position in real life, I should start with a health warning: what I am going to write does not in any way, shape or form reflect the opinion of Malta’s legal beagles as a combined corpus. It just reflects my own opinion, for what that’s worth.

As anyone with even cursory access to the ‘Net is aware, there have been less than complimentary bits and pieces flying about concerning that Taliana bloke, the one who is alleged to have killed Mr Clifford Micallef by dangerous driving. His representatives have been making the point that all this negative publicity is endangering due process, perhaps making it difficult for their client to get a fair trial.

Of course, in an ideal world, they would have a point: legal issues should be debated in a sterile environment, where the only facts that are relevant are those which are adduced in evidence and where the person charged with judging the person charged is entirely objective and dismisses from his or her mind anything extraneous thereto.

We do not live in an ideal world, and nor have we ever.

Leaving aside the perfectly cogent point, incidentally, that Mr Taliana will be tried, eventually, by a Magistrate who is trained to ignore Facebook and the comments section of the electronic papers and anything else that isn’t legally admissible (which is one of the best arguments for keeping laymen out of the debate, clearly) the law and the process of justice is not, actually, meant to operate in a vacuum, for all the not-so-valid argument that once something is sub judice, it is not susceptible of public comment.

Which means that, contrary to what the narrow view of due process may lead one to think, having a degree of influence over the judicial process by society’s take on something is not completely to be sneezed at. This is not to say that the baying hounds of the great unwashed should be the final arbiters of any debated issue, but the fact that they’re baying at all does need to be taken into consideration, to a greater or lesser degree and depending on the circumstances.

And of course, this fact needs to be taken into consideration not by someone who depends on said great unwashed for his or her tenure of office but by someone who will take a judicious view of the baying. This is why I can’t for the life of me understand how the Yanks can reconcile judicial independence with the weird notion they have of electing many of their judges by popular vote, along with the dog-catcher and the local sheriff.

But that is their problem, along with many others.

Getting back to Mr Taliana’s case in particular, though, there’s another reason why he can’t really grumble about the level of public comment his case has generated.

He was certainly not backward in coming forward when he put himself up into the virtual world, with all those silly pictures of him being all macho and cool with his motor and various other accoutrements of the young wannabe-Alpha male. He only has himself to thank now that these particular chickens have come home to roost all over him.

I part company with Daphne Caruana Galizia (and the Archbishop of wherever, for that matter) on the way people use the ‘Net and the social networking sites in particular. I don’t find anything that bad about people announcing to the world that they’re about to have breakfast or that they’re out with their Prince Charming (you know who you are) or whatever: if they get too irritating, I can block them out and they’re not taking up my bandwidth to tell me that they want some more wine.

In fact, I’m as guilty (and probably as inane) as the next man or woman.

But the virtual world has become as relevant and as real (now there’s an oxymoron) as the real one, pretty much, so Mr Taliana, and anyone else who puts misguided stuff up on the ‘Net has only himself to blame if it’s used against him.