Demonstrators marched in Valletta yesterday morning calling for the immediate release of Daniel Holmes, who is serving a 10-year prison sentence at Corradino after being found in possession of five cannabis plants.
The problem is that they are going to get nowhere fast with confused arguments and fallacious logic. As the Latin has it, dura lex sed lex. The law is harsh but it is the law. In other words, there is no way round it except by presidential pardon on the recommendation of the government, and that is the way they have to approach the matter. Marching and demonstrating are good in that they raise public awareness of the problem, but the bottom-line is that releasing Holmes from prison is in the gift of one person only: the Prime Minister, Joseph Muscat, who is the one who has to make the recommendation to the President of Malta. The President, of course, can refuse the pardon, but it is most unlikely that he would. Also, technically, this decision has to be a Cabinet decision, rather than the sole decision of the Prime Minister, but we know what the situation is there. If Joseph Muscat says that he would like Daniel Holmes released, I can’t exactly see his ministers throwing themselves about in a frenzy of protest and refusal. They are, after all, liberal and progressive.
So in sum, the release of Daniel Holmes, given that he was jailed in accordance with the law, can be made only by one route: a presidential pardon. The President cannot act unilaterally and on his own initiative, but only on the recommendation of the government. In other words, Holmes’s wife, mother and father, and his supporters, should be petitioning the government directly and not widening the scope of their campaign, as this is pointless other than in terms of awareness-raising. I am, in fact, astonished that despite the wide media coverage given to this matter, no journalist or campaigner (at least not until the time of writing this) has yet seen fit to put the only pertinent question in this issue right now: to confront the Prime Minister with a microphone and ask him whether he is prepared to recommend a presidential pardon for Daniel Holmes.
Daniel Holmes’s fate lies with Joseph Muscat and nobody else. Let us not allow this crucial point to be obscured. The government might well wish it to be obscured perhaps because it is not prepared to have the Prime Minister put on the spot in this manner. I suppose it is safe to conclude that if the Prime Minister wishes Holmes to be released from prison, he would have spoken in public by now to say that he is going to consult his Cabinet and, if they agree, will recommend a presidential pardon. But he has done no such thing yet.
Incidentally, yes, I agree that Holmes’s punishment is way too harsh, appalling even, that it could be classed, in human rights terminology, as “cruel and inhuman”. It is completely out of proportion to the crime. I also think, as it happens, that a man of Holmes’s age (he wasn’t exactly 18 when it happened) should have apprised himself fully of Maltese law before he began cultivating cannabis plants, and so calculated the risks accordingly. Teenagers do not understand that they can end up spending years in prison for ‘mere’ cannabis plants, but somebody of Holmes’s age should have known better. I think he was especially irresponsible, given that he had a new wife and baby, not to consider the possibility of spending years in prison, because he was no longer alone but had other people to consider – he always had his parents to consider anyway.
That said, 10 years for five cannabis plants is not appropriate. There is nothing to be gained from this kind of absurd cruelty. But then again, it is illogical for campaigners to draw his wife and child into the equation of his punishment. To suggest that people should be spared punishment because they have wives and children is a non sequitur. Most people in prison right now have spouses, children and parents. They do not come into it when judges and magistrates consider their judgement. They shouldn’t come into it. It is Daniel Holmes who should have considered the fate of his wife and children; it is not up to the courts to make up for his failures in that regard.
Nor does it help to mix demands for Daniel Holmes’s release with calls for the decriminalisation of possession and the extreme call for the liberalisation of all recreational drugs. Those are two separate issues, so they should be dealt with and discussed separately. It doesn’t help Holmes’s cause to drag them into it. Those who want him released should focus solely on his release, and that means a presidential pardon via the Prime Minister and his Cabinet.
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