A constitution application by a mother and son who claimed that their trial was not fair has been dismissed by the Constitutional Court.

Concetta Decelis and her son Jason were found guilty of murder in 2006.

The case involved the death of Rachael Bowdler who had collapsed from a drug overdose at Mrs Decelis's flat in St Paul's Bay. Neither Mrs Decelis nor her son had sought medical assistance for her and had ignored repeated advice from a certain David Gatt to take Ms Bowdler to hospital or to a clinic. A

fter Ms Bowdler died they disposed of her corpse by leaving it in a field in Mgarr. A jury convicted them of wilful homicide and Mrs Decelis was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment while her son was jailed for 25 years. The trial verdict and sentence were both confirmed by the Court of Criminal Appeal in 2008.

They pleaded before the Constitutional Court that the Court of Criminal Appeal had based its judgment on the fact that they had failed to apply the requisite "duty of care". This duty, they said, was an English common law principle and had no basis in Maltese law. They therefore claimed that their fundamental human right to a fair hearing had been violated as they had been found guilty of a crime that did not exist at law.

In a lengthy judgment Mr Justice Ray Pace declared that he did not agree with the Decelis family. The Criminal Code of Malta defined the crime of voluntary homicide as including the intention to put the life of a third party in manifest danger which resulted in death. The failure of Mrs and Mr Decelis to seek medical assistance for Ms Bowdler clearly constituted the intention to put her life in manifest danger. Ms Bowdler had succumbed to the effects of the overdose.

The reference made by the Court of Criminal Appeal to the "duty of care" was only made to underline the fact that although Mrs and Mr Decelis had assumed reponsibility for the consequences to Ms Bowdler. Their action or inaction was a determining factor in Ms Bowdler's survival or death.

The court therefore dismissed the application

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.