Court cases put off by a magistrate due to no-shows were more than halved thanks to a six-month pilot project that ended this month, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici said yesterday.

The experiment, carried out in hall of Magistrate Francesco Depasquale, saw the number of cases postponed because a party to a case did not attend a sitting reduced from 35 to 15 per cent, Dr Bonnici said.

The project had a private company take over the responsibility for summoning witnesses and accused parties to court, a task previously handled by the police. Magistrate Depasquale handled 861 cases during the six-month period, 666 falling within the new system, an “impressive” rate of completion, Dr Bonnici said.

The number of people successfully notified under the new system had reached some 98 per cent, he added.

The people not summoned included those demolishing their property

The only people not summoned had either listed the wrong address, moved house without notifying the authorities or were in the process of demolishing their property, Dr Bonnici said.

The system would now be extended to Magistrate Anthony Vella’s hall, which deals with family cases of a minor criminal nature. The minister wants the system to eventually be implemented throughout the Magistrates’ Court. That, Dr Bonnici said, would do away with the long lines of people waiting outside the courthouse every morning.

“We have a situation where hundreds of people are summoned to court at 9am and not heard for hours. We want people to come in when necessary and be processed expediently,” he said, adding that witnesses would only be summoned if the accused had already been notified.

Sentencing in absentia

Minister Owen Bonnici called on the Opposition to support government plans to allow magistrates to sentence people regardless of whether or not they attended a sitting.

Dr Bonnici said the so-called ‘guilty no-show’ system had already been included in draft amendments to the Code of Laws and he was awaiting the Opposition’s feedback before implementing it.

The measure would be applicable to minor criminal offences, not major ones handled by judges.

Dr Bonnici said the parties would be summoned twice in court and then a final time through The Malta Government Gazette before magistrates would proceed to sentencing, in a bid to drastically reduce delays.

“This is a just system, one that has already been implemented across Europe. The cases may be described as ‘small’ but, to those who are left waiting in court for hours, I can assure you they are definitely big, as are the delays,” he said.

Dr Bonnici said he was particularly motivated to push for the new system after having attended a series of morning sittings in the family court with Equality Minister Helena Dalli.

Sitting in on a number of cases related to child maintenance, Dr Bonnici said he was taken aback by the number of mothers who had turned up in court for nothing because their children’s father had ignored the summons. “This is simply not acceptable and needs to be stopped,” he said.