Justice, they say, is blind but, apparently, that is not its only handicap – though, in this case, it is meant to be a virtue so it would not look at faces, justice may have been crippled too.

Take the renvoi system. This is a procedure whereby the records of a criminal inquiry are sent back and forth between the court and the Attorney General’s Office, with six-week-long periods between each move.

Criminal lawyer Joseph Brincat, a former justice minister, referred to the matter the other day in the case of a man facing theft charges. The accused pleaded not guilty but was denied bail, which means he remains in preventive custody.

Dr Brincat complained that, even after the lapse of the six-week period, nothing could happen when the case was set to continue because the Attorney General’s Office failed to return to court the file containing the records.

Magistrate Joseph Mifsud, presiding over the case, commented that the renvoi procedure was obstructing an efficient system of justice because the six-week period was prolonging court cases unnecessarily.

The magistrate feels changes would be in order. He suggested that the six-week period is removed, thus allowing cases to be dealt with faster, adding that proceedings that now could drag on for five years would be decided within six months.

That is a valid suggestion, one that deserves to be urgently considered. The renvoi system would still apply in serious cases, like homicide and trafficking of dangerous and big amounts of drugs, but, otherwise, with the consent of the defence and the prosecution, the Magistrates’ Court, as a court of criminal judicature, can proceed to decide.

No stone should be left unturned to speed up justice. Likewise, suspects should be remanded in preventive custody only if considered to be a danger to society and/or if there are fears they could tamper with the evidence or abscond. Even here, they should remain behind bars for the shortest time possible until judgment is handed down.

In other words, justice must not only be blind but also move as fast as possible.

In an interview with The Times of Malta earlier this month, Chief Justice Emeritus Vincent Degaetano noted that the justice system should not only be fair but judgments must also be delivered in a timely manner.

He raised the issue of lengthy compilation proceedings, when the renvoi system often kicks in. Dr Degaetano, a judge of the European Court of Human Rights, noted that, in the late 1970s/early 1980s, one started noticing “a distortion of the whole purpose of committal proceedings, with times for the conclusion of the proceedings being extended by Parliament and magistrates succumbing to the temptation of ‘concluding’ the inquiry with a bare minimum of evidence to justify a decision that there is sufficient evidence for an indictment to be filed”. This, he pointed out, led to “the interminable referrals by the Attorney General that we see today”.

He insists that committal proceedings cannot go on for months, at times, even years, while the accused is in pre-trial detention. “In a sense, magistrates in Malta are sometimes ‘forced’ to grant bail because they know the system will not, in most cases, provide for trial within a reasonable time.” Can there be a more serious indictment?

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