Former Parliamentary Secretary Chris Said has no regrets over the way he handled the court case of a mother who wanted to be reunited with her baby even though it landed him in the dock charged with perjury.
Dr Said yesterday testified in his own defence and pleaded not guilty to lying under oath during a child custody case before the Family Court on April 14 last year, as alleged by the baby’s father.
Charges were filed against him following an appeal court decision last month, which led to his resignation as parliamentary secretary. Dr Said, who is still an MP, could get his portfolio back if the judgment, scheduled for October 28, vindicates him.
If found guilty, he will be treated as a first time offen-der and could get anything from probation, a conditional discharge or a suspended jail term.
Anthony Xuereb, the father, had initiated proceedings asking the police to charge Dr Said with perjury.
Mr Xuereb said Dr Said lied under oath to hide his irregular legal move that consisted of replacing a court application for custody with an identical one filed before a different magistrate in January 2007.
With a blue folder loaded with documents open before him, Dr Said insisted he never lied but missed out some details because he was asked to testify, from memory, over matters that had happened two years earlier.
“At the time, I was a lawyer in these courts and, as result of that case, I am now an accused in this same court... I used legal tools in the interest of a newborn. I would do the same now to reunite a baby with his mother,” he said, referring to the manner in which he had handled the two 2007 custody applications.
Magistrate Edwina Grima heard that the case revolved around Dr Said’s testimony before the civil court in Gozo last year in the case of Mr Xuereb and Helen Milligan, engaged in a legal battle over the custody of their child, now three years old.
Police Superintendent Martin Sammut, prosecuting, said, last May, Mr Xuereb filed a formal complaint claiming Dr Said had lied under oath. Investigations indicated the police had no grounds on which to prosecute. Mr Xuereb then filed a challenge before the Magistrates’ Court that was turned down. However, a court of appeal overturned that judgment, ruling Dr Said’s error did, in fact, constitute prima facie evidence of possible perjury.
In his testimony, Mr Xuereb explained he insisted on the perjury case because Ms Milligan had been given custody of the baby unfairly and Dr Said lied about it.
On January 18, 2007, Dr Said, on behalf of Ms Milligan, had filed an urgent application before Magistrate Tonio Micallef Trigona, in the Gozo courts, demanding custody of the baby. The magistrate put off the case for three weeks later and Ms Milligan deemed this a long time to have to wait. For this reason, Dr Said withdrew the first application and filed another one before Magistrate Paul Coppini. It could not be filed again before the first magistrate because his two-week stay in Gozo was up and he would return within a fortnight. That same day, Magistrate Coppini upheld Ms Milligan’s request for urgency and granted her temporary custody of the boy.
Mr Xuereb insisted he was never informed about the second application and Magistrate Coppini had gone ahead with the decree without hearing him.
When Dr Said testified about the 2007 applications during another custody hearing in April 2009, he had wrongly said the court awarded Ms Milligan custody during an evening sitting and after hearing both sides. “He said that to hide what he had done on January 19 (2007). He had something to hide,” Mr Xuereb said.
After being released from professional secrecy by Ms Milligan, Dr Said testified, recalling how desperate his former client had been to have her newborn back. When Magistrate Micallef Trigona decided to consider the first application three weeks later, the mother started panicking, so he recommended withdrawing the first application and filing another.
“Mr Xuereb is trying to make it look irregular, deceitful and shady. But, today, I would do the same,” Dr Said insisted.
He referred to a Constitutional case in which Mr Xuereb accused Ms Milligan of “magistrate shopping”. The court found she had not acted irregularly in her attempt to have the case heard urgently.
Dr Said insisted he did not lie under oath. He explained that, after Magistrate Coppini had granted temporary custody to Ms Milligan, that same day Mr Xuereb filed an urgent application requesting the court to reconsider the ruling and hear him out. This led to a long evening session that ended with the court confirming that Ms Milligan should have custody.
When he testified in April last year he had said the court granted Ms Milligan custody in an evening sitting when both parties were present. He had merely forgotten what had happened earlier that day and the details were all documented in the case file, Dr Said told the court.
At the end of the sitting, the lawyers made their submissions. Lawyer Roberto Montalto, representing Mr Xuereb, left the matter in the hands of the court and lawyer Joseph Giglio pointed out that for the perjury charge to be proven, one had to show that Dr Said had in fact lied with the intent to commit a crime, which was clearly not the case.
He said this was “a strange case” in which Mr Xuereb was trying to clutch at straws to obtain custody of his son, something the courts had denied. “Enough, your time is up, game over,” the lawyer said, addressing himself to Mr Xuereb.