A constitutional court has ruled that prisoners serving life sentences can be considered for parole after serving a minimum of 25 years.
In a judgment handed down by Mr Justice Joseph R. Micallef, the First Hall of the Civil Court in its Constitutional jurisdiction ruled that even persons found guilty of the most horrific crimes should not be stripped of their dignity and the "right to hope" of one day being released from custody.
In 2007, a jury had found Brian Vella guilty of the murder of his neighbours, 79-year-old Gerald Grima and his 63-year-old wife Josephine, whom he gagged and bound in their apartment on February 10, 2000. The elderly couple died of asphyxiation.
Vella was given a life imprisonment, a punishment confirmed on appeal in 2011.
Judge Micallef noted that a breach of article 3 rights - which prohibit inhuman and degrading treatment - must be shown in the light of all of the circumstances of the case, together with the physical and moral effects which a sentence's length left on the person.
It was submitted that the anguish felt by the applicant, faced with the prospect of never being afforded a reduction in punishment or even being able to apply for parole or remission, precisely because he is serving a life sentence, breached his fundamental rights.
The court said it recognised the punishment handed down to the accused was for a terrible crime which robbed two elderly persons of their life during a break-in at their home. It also noted that the harshest punishment was given - despite a lack of juror unanimity - as well as society's expectation of harsh justice for the crime.
"However, the court also recognised that in this regard, the person who is found guilty of the worst crimes must not lose its dignity and must retain its right to hope that, after having paid for its actions, be considered as having learned from the shortcoming and change the path it had taken," said the judge.
He observed that a judge at the European Court of Human Rights, in the case Vinter et vs UK had ruled there was a "right to hope" by those who commit the most abhorrent of acts....yet who "nevertheless retain their fundamental humanity and carry within themselves the capacity to change. Long and deserved though their prison sentences may be, they retain the right to hope that someday they may have atoned for the wrongs which they have committed. They ought not to be deprived entirely of such hope."
Society had a right to be protected from dangerous persons who do not want to change their path and this bound the State to restrain and subdue those persons found guilty , despite the passage of time from the crime, said the court. But notwithstanding this, it has been accepted that in order for a life sentence not to breach the European Convention on Human Rights, there must be a mechanism for its revision.
The balance between the justification for detention is not necessarily static and may shift in the course of the sentence and it is only by reviewing the justification for the continued detention at points during the sentence that these factors or shifts can be properly evaluated, said the court.
The ECHR had established that a whole life prisoner is entitled to know what he is to do to be considered for release and under what conditions. The possibility of the President of the Republic exercising his or her prerogative of mercy did not satisfy this requirement, stated the judge, as it did not depend on fixed criteria or an established procedure.
Neither was prison leave sufficient to satisfy the requirement, as it often depended on circumstances beyond the prisoner's control.
The court upheld the applicant's submissions, saying that it would be ordering that after Vella had served 25 years of his sentence, he would be eligible to appear before a parole board who would then decide whether or not he is a suitable candidate for "one of the remedies given by the same...in the same manner that every other person who is serving a sentence, but not for life, may benefit from."