Five years after being arraigned and three lost police statements later, a drug addict was yesterday jailed after being found guilty of drug possession while at Mount Carmel Hospital.

The long delay in meting out justice and the fact that three original statements given to the police were lost during the course of the proceedings emerged in the judgment handed down by Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera, who listed the mishaps in the case.

The case first came to light in 2000 when three inmates within the prison section of Mount Carmel – Lawrence Attard, Charles Mugliette and George Farrugia – accused 38-year-old Sandro Mifsud of supplying drugs to them while in hospital. Police Inspector Josric Mifsud investigated the case and had even received the go ahead, as is standard procedure, from the Attorney General in 2000, for the case to be heard summarily and decided by a magistrate. However, Mr Mifsud was only arraigned in 2005.

The judgment does not say why it took so long to take the case to court. It notes that sometime during the court proceedings, Police Inspector Johann Fenech took over the case.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera described the prosecution conducted by Mr Fenech as “unfortunate” having had to deal with the fact that the original police statements had gone missing. Although photocopies of the statements had been produced in court, the fact that it could not be proven that they were faithful copies of the original rendered them as inadequate evidence, the magistrate said. The case of the prosecution was further damaged because when the three accusers testified in 2009, because the statements could not be found, they could not remember what they had said in 2000.

Faced with insufficient evidence, the court cleared Mr Mifsud of drug trafficking but found him guilty of drug possession because he had admitted in court that he took drugs while in hospital, the magistrate said.

The court noted that between 1989 and 1999 Mr Mifsud had already been convicted 21 times for drug related crimes and that, according to a pre-sentencing report in late 2010, Mr Mifsud did not show the will to change his ways and reform.

He had just been released from prison after serving a 12-year term for a string of thefts and drug-related charges, the magistrate noted before jailing him for 18 months.