Late last week, this paper ran a story which, unfortunately, is likely to have gone over the heads of most people, even though it was about terrible legal injustices that we are all at risk of facing.
Sadly, because we have been living with our wretched justice system for so long, most of us have given up and accepted it as a natural part of life. This means that we will automatically avoid fighting for our rights by going to court because we know that cases are likely to drag on for years on end, simultaneously dragging us through the wringer and with no real hope of fair justice being served.
Ever since I was a child, I remember being told that I should only ever consider going to court if I were guilty of something. Grown-ups explained to me how the system tended to work against the innocent: “…so, if you’re in the right, stay away and settle things out of court”, I was told.
Thirty years later and this still seems to be the case. Good people who are busy leading an honest life still avoid the system like the plague, even if this means never getting what is their due.
Unfortunately, though, sometimes we cannot avoid it all together because either we are either dragged into court by other citizens or, God forbid, by the police. A leading criminal lawyer, Dr Joe Gilio, told this paper that sometimes the police tend to arraign people in court without having a solid case against them.
According to the lawyer, this happens because the police do not have the resources to build a proper case but still go ahead with their accusations based on “flimsy evidence”. These cases then go on for years on end, dragging people through unimaginable levels of emotional, financial and psychological stress, only to see the case against them eventually dropped because of insufficient evidence.
To add insult to injury, the system does not provide a mechanism for the Court of Appeal to review a complaint related to a miscarriage of justice. At the moment, as the law stands, the Court of Criminal Appeal can only consider reopening proceedings if the case arises after a trial by jury.
This has been an issue forever and a day but has only just resurfaced because of the recent case of Emmanuel Camilleri – who seems to have been wrongly accused and jailed for abusing his daughter. Camilleri did not face a trial by jury so the system does not allow him to reopen his case and obtain some justice for the 400 days he spent in prison.
Whilst this particular story hit the headlines, it is not as isolated as we might think. Lengthy and complicated procedures haunt anyone who has ever had the displeasure of being involved with the courts. We’ve all read or heard of people being jailed for crimes that they committed years earlier, and under different circumstances, where the court does not have the discretion to consider that they are now changed people and they are still sent to prison, long years later.
The phrase “justice delayed is justice denied” has elusive origins. It seems that it can be traced back to the Magna Carta in 1215 but wherever it originates from, it is rooted in the noble belief that if legal redress is too late then it is no redress at all.
I find delayed ‘justice’ especially disturbing when it involves reformed drug addicts. Given the nature of a drug addict’s crime, it is ridiculous that prison is still the only course of action. We have read of cases where people who have clearly turned their life around, and who have been drug-free for many years, are still sent to prison for a drug-related crime committed years back. Knowing the grave drug situation in prison, and the risk of re-corruption of any such individual, throwing a reformed drug addict into prison does no good for the individual or for society at large.
What’s worse is that everyone involved with the justice system has learnt to take advantage of it. So sometimes it is the accused’s lawyers who deliberately obstruct and drag out the proceedings. Sometimes it’s the prosecution, sometimes even the judiciary, and because it’s been a way of life for so long, there’s hardly any fuss about it: we just take it in our stride, until some particular case comes to the surface, hits a couple of news cycles and then, once again, everything is forgotten and we’re back to square one.
When contacted, Justice Minister Owen Bonnici – as diplomatic as ever – said that the government is always open to ideas on how to improve the situation. But here we are, still waiting. Whatever happened to the 450 proposals for change that were presented to the government more than six months ago? Has justice reform been put on the backburner?