A man appealing an 18-month jail sentence was almost left without a legal leg to stand on because a court registrar had mistakenly logged his appeal as having been abandoned rather than adjourned. 

Jonathan Farrugia, who stands accused of being involved in the attempted bombing of a Fgura couple last year, had been found guilty of falsifying banknotes in 2016. 

He had appealed that decision, and a judge had ordered for an appeal hearing to be postponed to a later date as it clashed with another trial.

But the court registrar forget to log this, almost resulting in the appeal being thrown out.

The error was compounded when Mr Farrugia failed to put in an appearance, kickstarting a legal process whereby the appeal is deemed abandoned, which is what the registrar put down in the records of the case.

By the time the case was eventually heard, on February 19, 2019, the original judge had retired and the case was assigned to a different court, presided over by Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera.

When prosecuting lawyer Elaine Mercieca Rizzo, from the AG’s Office, argued that the appeal had been abandoned and that the conviction had thus become final, the issue finally came to the fore. 

Both the appellant’s lawyer, David Gatt, as well as inspector Malcolm Bondin, who had prosecuted before the Magistrates’ Court, testified under oath that the appeal had never been abandoned but rather adjourned.

The court registrar was also summoned to testify on Thursday, admitting under oath that he had made a mistake and that the judge had ordered the case to be adjourned.

The registrar had informed both the prosecuting officer and the appellant’s lawyer of the adjournment date, with printed copies of the relative e-mails being exhibited in court.

In the light of this evidence, Madam Justice Scerri Herrera observed that this had been “a serious shortcoming by the Court registrar” who had not only recorded the appeal as abandoned, but had even failed to cancel the appellant’s admission ticket to jail, even though the appeal was still pending.

The Court pointed out that the accused would have ended serving his 18-month jail term even though submissions had not been made in his appeal.

Madam Justice Scerri Herrera ordered the necessary corrections in the records of the case, while adjourning the appeal for continuation.