Englishman Steve Marsden was yesterday jailed for 25 years and fined €60,000 after jurors found him guilty by eight votes to one of conspiring to import 50,000 ecstasy pills.
Mr Marsden, 48, had been found in possession of the pills which were hidden in the panels of his jeep when he arrived from Sicily on July 9, 2006, the night of the World Cup final.
In submissions on punishment, the head of the Prosecution Unit at the Attorney General's Office, lawyer Anthony Barbara told the court that the drugs would have been worth close to €500,000 if sold.
This, he added, was a case "where these visitors are trying to take advantage of Maltese hospitality".
Mr Marsden's intended to harm Maltese society and thus he did not deserve any mitigation of punishment given the severity of the crime, Dr Barbara said.
"There was no cooperation on his part and it took the police 10 hours to retrieve the pills. His actions reveal his intentions," he added.
Referring to the verdict, which was returned by the jurors after 11 hours of deliberation, Dr Barbara said that eight out of nine jurors did not believe Mr Marsden's testimony.
Defence lawyer Joseph Brincat asked the court to take into consideration all the facts including that the pills were not illegal in Malta at the time his client imported them.
Noting that his client had a clean police record, Dr Brincat said it was also his first time making a drug run and he was to receive only Lm5,000 for doing it. In addition, Mr Marsden had given the police two names of people who supplied the drugs to him and information about them.
After taking into consideration the submissions made, Mr Justice Galea Debono, who presided over the trial, jailed Mr Marsden for 25 years and fined him €60,000. He ordered that if the fine is not paid it will be converted into 18 months imprisonment.
The court further ordered that any time spent in preventative custody should be reduced from the sentence.
Dr Barbara was assisted by lawyers Nadine Sant and Jason Grima.
Police Inspectors Norbert Ciappara and Dennis Theuma had conducted the investigations that led to Mr Marsden's arrest and arraignment.
When originally arraigned in 2006, Mr Marsden had been charged with importing and trafficking 28 packets, containing the pills. Two months into the compilation of evidence, court expert Mario Mifsud, a pharmacist, had testified that the pills were not illegal. It resulted that the pills were not ecstasy but contained the chemical mCPP, which shares several pharmacological properties with MDMA (ecstasy) but the chemical was not illegal in Malta when he had arrived on the island.
The Attorney General had then dropped the charges of importation and trafficking of ecstasy and issued a bill of indictment accusing Mr Marsden of conspiring to deal in ecstasy.
Mr Marsden appealed but the Court of Criminal Appeal threw out the appeal and ruled that "a person may be found guilty of, say, conspiracy to import heroin into Malta even though the stuff he eventually brings into Malta turns out to be baking powder. It all depends on what was actually agreed upon between the conspirators and, more specifically, on the object of the conspiracy".