To many, the story of the mother who was sent to jail after it was found that she did not allow her estranged husband to have access to their 16-year-old son had a happy ending.
The woman, a teacher by profession, was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment on September 27 but walked free on Monday evening after the President issued a pardon in the wake of a public outcry.
This is both good and bad news.
The good news is that logic prevailed and the woman was freed.
The bad news is that the matter had to reach such a tragic point.
In welcoming the happy outcome, the National Council of Women hoped that the case would serve as “a lesson to us all: that although justice is administered it does not always guarantee that right prevails and that an act of forgiveness is indeed more noble”.
The merits of the case are, unfortunately, not an uncommon occurrence in today’s society. Broken marriages and separations often lead to squabbles, in some cases even worse, about access and custody of the children.
It is not unusual either for a parent who errs to be imprisoned for violating the other party’s visitation rights. The exposure given to this latest case was, however, unprecedented, possibly because of the duration of the prison term and also due to the fact that the child was well into his teens.
It appears that both the Magistrates’ Court – which had first sentenced the mother for three months in prison – and the Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by a judge, which confirmed the magistrate’s decision, acted within the parameters of the law.
In fact, at least one MP – Helena Dalli – publicly admitted that the lawmakers are “partly to blame” because judges and magistrates have to abide by the laws passed by Parliament. Perhaps the whole Cabinet too made the same admission, albeit by implication, when it agreed to recommend a presidential pardon to the mother.
However, the Labour MP went beyond the lawmakers’ responsibility, noting that “while the law is the law, our judges and magistrates also have room for discretion”.
Indeed, the legislator sets the rules and the courts interpret and enforce them. Doing so is no mean feat for it is up to judges and magistrates to go by the letter of the law but, at the same time, remain in line with its spirit.
Going beyond or below what the legislator had in mind when enacting a law is, therefore, a hazard faced by members of the judiciary every time they sit in judgment.
Though, in this case, the courts did act within the provisions of the law, the public perceived the sentence as being excessive, given the circumstances in the public domain.
The judiciary is not expected to decide according to public perceptions – that would be a very bad day for justice – but it certainly pays for judges and magistrates to be very careful to avoid situations, as in this latest case, where a public outcry is seen to have led to the presidential pardon.
The long – at times, even unnecessarily long and cumbersome – judicial process can be exploited by all parties involved, pushed by the courts themselves, to explore all avenues that would allow common sense to prevail and embarrassing situations to be avoided as, evidently, happened in this case.
The last thing we would like to see is a repeat of this incident.