A man facing drug trafficking charges after police caught him and his friends sharing a cannabis joint more than 12 years ago has been spared jail time by an appeals court.
Melvin Demicoli, now 36, was just 19 when, back in the summer of 2005, police appeared at the Żabbar playing field where he and his friends would pass round a joint.
Police arrested several youths there, including Mr Demicoli, and found several pieces of cannabis resin inside his car.
Mr Demicoli was charged with drug trafficking and cannabis possession and handed a six-month jail term and a €600 fine at the end of proceedings which began in 2008 and reached judgment stage in 2013, when Mr Demicoli was already 27 years old.
The Magistrates’ Court had concluded this was a case of trafficking by sharing, basing itself upon a mistaken assessment of facts which fell "one step short from delivering justice," the Court of Appeal observed on Friday.
The first court had failed to appreciate that Mr Demicoli and his friends were sharing the drug which, therefore, belonged to all of them.
“They were all on an equal footing,” Mr Justice Antonio Mizzi observed, adding that if anyone thought that “the appellant was the big fish, the pusher, then with all due respect, one was mistaken.”
All evidence needed to be sifted in a way so as to ensure “ true justice, reflecting the reality of things at the Żabbar playing field” the Court observed.
When delivering judgment, the court considered the fact that the amount of cannabis had been negligible and had been consumed on site.
Moreover, proceedings had dragged on for 8 years before judgment, taking 3 years for the first hearing to be scheduled.
Considering that meanwhile, the appellant had matured, held a fixed job and a stable family life, had been a first time offender and had no other pending criminal cases, “the punishment inflicted could not have been worse.”
For these reasons, the appeal was upheld and the punishment was converted to a two-year conditional discharge.
Lawyer Arthur Azzopardi was defence counsel.