Maximilian Ciantar, whose bid to rob a Dingli couple three years ago had been thwarted by the arrival of the police, has had his jail term confirmed on appeal, after the judge took into account a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights on statements made by the accused.

Mr Ciantar, who had been jailed for two years for running over 10-year old twin girls at Attard in 2011, was one of two robbers who had broken into the Dingli farmhouse on Easter Sunday early morning, in an attempt to steal cash from the farmer and his wife while they were milking their cows.

Mr Ciantar, then 26, together with 19-year-old Darryl Anthony Anderson had donned a dark head scarf and a crash helmet respectively before taking the couple by surprise. Mr Ciantar had also been armed with a knife.

As the farmer ran off, one of the thieves had given chase while the one wearing the helmet had punched the woman, ordering her to hand over money. The woman had later told the police that her husband had been carrying some €1,000 in cash when he fled the scene.

Luckily, the robbers’ plans were thwarted by the arrival of the police.

The couple had later identified their aggressors at the police station and had also confirmed their identity in court.

The proceedings before the Magistrates Court ultimately resulted in a conviction in November 2017 and a 9-month jail term for Mr Ciantar who filed an appeal.

The appellant’s lawyer contested the conviction, stating that this had relied mainly on the victims’ identification of the suspect which, in turn, had been unduly ‘contaminated’ by the officers’ influence at the police station.

However, the court observed that although such identification was always to be analysed with great caution, in this case the couple’s version had been ‘a precise one.’

The evidence showed that the sole reason for Mr Ciantar’s presence at the farmhouse was to commit the theft. Even though he had claimed that he had accompanied his friend without knowing what was in store, once there, he had gone along with the plan, his actions amounting to preparatory acts to the perpetration of the crime.

Later, in his statement, Mr Ciantar had described the whole episode as a ‘stupidity’ and an ‘adventure’ which he would never repeat.

The probatory value of that statement which had not been released in the presence of a lawyer, was questioned by the appellant.

However, the court of criminal appeal, presided over by Madam Justice Edwina Grima, in a marked departure from recent case law on this subject, declared that the issue needed to be analysed with greater caution in the light of a recent pronouncement by the ECHR which had marked a shift in former judicial criteria.

In the case Philippe Beuze vs Belgium, the Grand Chamber of the ECHR in November 2018 declared that in criminal proceedings, a statement by the accused when not assisted by a lawyer, was not to be automatically discarded as evidence, but its admissibility was to be first subjected to a twofold test.

The court was to see whether there existed compelling reasons for the right to a lawyer to be withheld and also to assess the overall fairness of the proceedings.

In this case, Mr Ciantar had consulted his trusted lawyer, Joseph Brincat, before the interrogation and had been well-assisted all throughout the court proceedings, Madam Justice Grima observed.

Moreover, at the time of the attempted robbery, Mr Ciantar had been a 26-year old with 11 past convictions on his record and hence certainly did not qualify as a “vulnerable person”, the court continued, further noting that both the accused and his lawyer had been informed of the charges he was facing.

The suspect’s statement had only served to corroborate the version of the couple who had been the main witnesses and who had identified Mr Ciantar as one of their aggressors.

Finally, the court observed that the current right to legal assistance during interrogation did not actually translate into “much effective assistance,” since the lawyer could only intervene in exceptional circumstances, a proviso which did not figure under the relative EU Directive.

In the light of all this, the court declared that the accused’s statement together with the victims’ testimony served to confirm his guilt, thus rejecting the appeal and confirming punishment.