The jail term imposed upon the man convicted in a trial by jury of the murder of Anthony Borg, il-Bona, was confirmed following an appeal filed by the Attorney General who had argued that the presiding judge had influenced the final verdict.
Allan Galea, the man declared guilty of the murder by a verdict of six votes in favour against three, had been sentenced to a jail term of six years and ordered to pay €9,647 by way of court expenses at the end of a trial by jury in December 2015.
An appeal was filed by the AG arguing that the presiding judge had influenced the jurors when making his final address, expressly directing them to take up a particular line of defence, namely that this was an excusable homicide on the basis of excess in legitimate self-defence.
A partial judgment had been handed down in March whereby the court of appeal, presided over by acting president Mr Justice Joseph Zammit McKeon and justices Abigail Lofaro and Edwina Grima, had declared that the prosecution could not request a harsher punishment when appealing from a verdict delivered by a jury.
The final judgment was delivered on Thursday wherein the court of appeal observed that the trial by jury constituted a pillar of democracy, citing the authoritative Lord Denning who had described it as “the lamp that shows that freedom lives”.
The jury system certainly was not flawless since ordinary citizens had to grasp, within a matter of days, unfamiliar legal concepts, the court observed.
This necessitated the intervention of the presiding judge to explain points of law in such manner as to enable the members of the jury to reach a final verdict, although the jurors always remained sole judges of facts.
In this particular case of Allan Galea, there had been various lines of defence and divergent legal interpretations, making it pertinent for the judge “to direct the jurors onto the path which could best lead to the administration of justice,” the court of appeal declared.
Indeed, the judge’s interventions throughout the whole trial had been intended to ensure that the right to a fair hearing would not be breached, the court concluded, thereby rejecting the AG’s appeal and confirming the verdict and sentence.
The whole saga dated back to an argument which had broken out between the accused and the victim outside the PN club in Marsaxlokk on the evening of February 21, 2010, when Mr Galea, brandishing a knife, had allegedly challenged Mr Borg to a fight.
The latter had, in turn, fetched a firearm from his car and fired two warning shots to scare off the aggressor. However, a scuffle broke out and il-Bona ended up suffering several stab wounds, dying shortly afterwards on the spot.
Lawyers Joseph Giglio and Stephen Tonna Lowell were counsel to Mr Galea.