Paul Abela had been convicted for damaging a car on 5 January in Ghaxaq as well as for assaulting people, throwing hard objects at them and relapsing.

The first court found him guilty of all the charges brought against him.

At around 2pm on the day in question, the car that was damaged – a white Daihatsu Charade – was parked in Abela’s garage, although it did not belong to him.

In his statement to police, Abela said he had seen two people arguing next to the car and he angrily told them to go away. He said he had tapped on the car roof and later grabbed one of the men and threw him off his property. In spite of this, Abela claimed he did not know how the windscreen of the car was broken.

The Appeals court ruled these were the actions of a man who easily flies off the handle and therefore still found him guilty of the first two charges, but ruled no evidence had been presented to support the relapsing charge.

The court therefore changed the man’s original eight month-jail term to a five-month one.