More reason to take justice reform seriously

Two revelations this week should serve to seriously shake up Malta's justice and law enforcement sectors and add momentum to ongoing efforts  by the Justice Reform Commission to overhaul the entire system.

The first concerns the details that are now emerging of last week's grisly double murder of Mario Camilleri and his son, whose bodies were discovered partially buried in a field in Qajjenza, showing signs of extreme violence.

It now transpires that the main suspect in this double murder - Jason Galea of Birzebbuga, the victims' brother-in-law and uncle, respectively - was involved in an armed robbery two years ago and was released on bail for the paltry sum of €2,000 and a personal guarantee of €3,000.

The second revelation came from the European Court of Human Rights, which issued a damning ruling on Malta's entire approach to bail in other circumstances. The case was filed by Tomas Mikalauskas, a Lithuanian national accused of drug charges in September 2009, who was detained and repeatedly remanded in custody over a period of 10 months.

After 10 months in custody, Mikalauskas was granted bail, subject to conditions which included a deposit of €50,000 and a personal guarantee of €15,000. The deposit was later reduced to €40,000, but the personal guarantee increased to €60,000. In the end, Mikalauskas spent two more years in custody before finally being able to successfully apply for bail.

At a glance the contradiction between these two cases is too striking to be ignored. The charges faced by Mikalauskas were admittedly serious - although on closer inspection (as pointed out in this newspaper at the time) he appears to have been a minor accomplice in a wider drug trafficking network - but others charged with the same crime were awarded much more lenient bail conditions.

But it is the leniency of the former case that raises all the serious questions. Armed robbery is regarded as an aggravated crime in all respectable jurisdictions, for a number of reasons. Aside from the crime of theft, there are additional charges, such as unlawful possession of weapons, and the fact that brandishing such weapons in a public place automatically exposes innocent bystanders to danger.

This is why persons charged with armed robbery are generally perceived to be more dangerous than drug mules in a broader drug trafficking operation. It is therefore inconceivable that the less serious of the above two crimes would be subject to a personal guarantee no less than 20 times higher than the more serious charge.

Unfortunately this type of discrepancy has become commonplace in this country, and the resulting fallout for public trust in the system has often been noted in the past. It would be regrettable (but almost inevitable, in view of other similar cases) to have to conclude that the suspect's nationality was a deciding factor in a court decision that has now been ruled a breach of human rights.

In practice, however, this is how the discrepancy pans out: the office of the prosecution routinely objects to bail, or insists on astronomical sums, in cases where the defendant is foreign, the official pretext being that foreigners are likelier to abscond.

There are now multiple rulings - involving Malta and elsewhere - to the effect that this is not an acceptable practice in a European country. But there are two sides to the coin here: the real problem is that the local law courts that adopt draconian measures when it comes to foreign suspects charged with minor crimes also tend to treat serious criminals with kid gloves, as long as they are Maltese.

Galea is hardly the only example of this tendency. One other recent case was that of Dione Mercieca, who was granted generous bail - and, significantly, allowed to leave the country on business trips while still awaiting trial - despite having turned himself in for the murder of his business partner in 2008.

This incidentally has a direct bearing on the prosecution's traditional argument about minimising the chance of absconding: given the severity of the charges faced by Mercieca and that he pre-emptively admitted to them, there was a high chance that the defendant would, in fact, abscond.

In the case of the recent double murder, one can even talk of direct repercussions of this same tendency on Malta's criminal underworld itself. Naturally innocence must be presumed until guilt is proven, but if guilt is proven in this case, the murderer will have availed himself of his provisional liberty, granted to him by the courts, to commit an even more serious crime than the one he was originally charged with.

This is deeply worrying, as it appears to illustrate a direct correlation between the hardening of a local crime network and the apparent leniency with which the law courts handle local criminal cases. One can hardly claim to be surprised, therefore, when the rate of violent homicide appears to increase significantly over time.

All this should add considerable impetus to ongoing efforts to reform the system. It is heartening to note that the Justice Reform Commission has already identified the core problem and come up with proposals to tackle it. One hopes other institutions will also treat the issue with the seriousness it deserves.