A bird trapper who was fined and handed a three-year suspension of his licence for trapping during the closed season will have his case heard afresh on account of a divergence between the typed judgment and that originally written by the magistrate.

Carmel Xerri had landed the €1,600 fine and licence suspension in May after he was found guilty on the strength of his statement and a series of short video clips provided by an environmental activist.

He had been arrested back in March 2017, charged with trapping during the closed season and using an illegal bird caller.

In the course of appeal proceedings, Mr Xerri's lawyer argued that his client's statement was inadmissible as evidence since he had not been assisted by a lawyer at the time.

As for the allegedly incriminating footage, defence lawyer Kathleen Calleja Grima, pointed out that the reportedly 30-minute incident filmed by the environmentalist was not reflected in the shorter footage apparently consisting of a series of short clips.

Moreover, the video first showed three masked men in their trapping hides, followed by footage of three men walking across the fields.

“It is submitted that the gaps between the first film and the second cannot be filled with suspicion or suppositions,” the lawyer argued, adding that the activist who had produced the footage had not actually seen any trapping activity going on, but merely trapping nets being laid out and later gathered.

The presence of such nets alone and the difficulty in identifying the masked men made it difficult to link the appellant to the illegal trapping, argued his lawyer.

A further ground for challenging the conviction stemmed from a discrepancy between the judgment written in the magistrate’s hand and the typed version exhibited at the appeal stage, the lawyer argued.

The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera, observed that whereas under the handwritten version the accused had been found guilty of all charges, in the typed version the last charge was declared time-barred.

However, in both cases, the punishment inflicted had been the same, the court observed.

“Therefore it emerges that there are two conflicting sentences with regards to what charges the appellant is being found guilty of.”

Citing case law on the formal requisites of judgments, the court observed that a judgment was to declare the facts upon which guilt was based; the punishment and the article of law upon which guilt was based.

In this case, although the typed version adhered to the prerequisites for validity, the wording of the judgment did not fully reflect the original handwritten version, thus giving rise to two conflicting judgments, the court declared, thereby annulling the judgment and ordering the case to be heard afresh on the merits.