Welshman Daniel Holmes, who is serving a 10-year jail term for cultivating cannabis, has lost an appeal before the Constitutional Court where he pleaded that he was not given legal aid during police investigations against him; he was not given effective legal assistance by the legal aid lawyer when he was arraigned before the Gozo and he was discriminated against when the Attorney General decided that his drugs case should be heard before a judge rather than a Magistrate, thus making his liable for harsher penalty.

The Constitutional Court also upheld an Appeal by the Attorney General against a Civil Court decision that the criminal proceedings against Mr Holmes had taken an unreasonable length of time. It reversed the court's decision to award Mr Holmes compensation of €7,000.

Mr Holmes had been jailed for 10 years and six months and fined 23,000 for cultivating about a kilo of cannabis.

In its decision today, the court ruled that the absence of the lawyer during interrogation, by itself, did not lead to breach of the right to a fair hearing, as Mr Holmes had claimed. In that case, Mr Holmes' statement to the police could be considered irrelevant in view of his admission, the fact that he was caught in obvious circumstances ad he was not a vulnerable person. His statement was given voluntarily and there had been no abuse by the police.

Furthermore, Mr Holmes had been assigned an experienced legal aid lawyer during the arraignment and it was thanks to that lawyer that he was granted bail when he was arraigned in June 1996. It was only later that Mr Holmes appointed a private lawyer who continued to assist him until July 2007 when the lawyer renounced the case and Mr Holmes was given another legal aid lawyer, who was also experienced. He continued to assist him until another private lawyer was engaged. The court said it found no reasons to justify the claim that assistance by the legal aid lawyers was not effective.

As to Mr Holmes' claims of discrimination and that his punishment was disproportionate when compared to similar cases, the court noted that Mr Holmes had pleaded guilty and the sentence could not have been any lower given the amount of cannabis cultivated, the potential for more and the fact that he had also admitted intent to supply the drug. No discrimination had been shown.

The court therefore upheld the appeal by the Attorney General and reformed the lower court decision by deleting that part which found that Mr Holmes had been denied his rights when he was not tried within a reasonable time. The compensation of €7,000 given to Mr Holmes was revoked.