Life convict deserves right to apply for parole, lawyers say

Two lawyers believe that the conviction of double-murderer Brian Vella, who is serving a life sentence at Corradino prison, should be subject to remission and reflect the spirit of a recent European Court of Human Rights on life sentences.

Lawyers David Camilleri and Joseph Gatt are the first advocates to challenge the prohibition of parole on life sentences, after the Strasbourg court upheld the petition of three lifers and told the United Kingdom had to give such convicts the chance to show that they have reformed and apply for parole.

Camilleri and Gatt's client, Brian Vella, is convicted for the murder of an elderly couple which he bound and gagged during a burglary at their home.

Brian Vella had his life term confirmed on appeal after a jury found him 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 back in 2000. The man died of asphyxia when he wrapped brown plastic tape over his mouth, while Josephine Grima was attacked with a blunt object on her head.

"We are of the understanding that the sphere and institution of human rights applies to all persons, regardless of their past behaviour. Therefore, a person who has committed and found guilty of murder still has his fundamental human rights," Camilleri told MaltaToday.

The two lawyers are arguing in a constitutional case that the continued detention of a person imprisoned for life without any hope of release violates his fundamental human rights under Article 3 of the Convention, because such a situation amounts to inhuman treatment.

"The secondary element of punishment - the first being punitive - is preventative, that is, a person becomes rehabilitated, knows his mistakes and applies himself to be ready for reintegration within the society. In the case of lifers, this second element is missing. Therefore, regardless of our client's behaviour, progress, rehabilitation, our client under the current system is going to die in prison.

"We submit that this amounts to inhuman treatment. The moment that our client feels that he has paid his debt towards society and is in a position to be rehabilitated, under the current system he may neither apply for early release or parole. The psychological trauma that this circumstance puts on our client amounts to a severe case of inhuman treatment," Camilleri said.

The two lawyers said they are not suggesting that Vella be released. "But he should at least be given the hope of such release. Our Constitutional application aims at amending the law in such a way so as he may be in a position to merely apply for early release. The outcome of such application is not an issue of the constitutional case: it is the impossibility of such an application which is being attacked."

The case, the first in Malta, follows last week's ECHR judgment in Vinter and Others versus the United Kingdom, which stated that whole life tariffs were in violation of Article 3.

Vinter ruling

The European Court of Human Rights' judges ruled by 16 to one there had to be a review of the sentence and the possibility of a release. But they said this did not mean there was "any prospect of imminent release".

The ruling only applies in England and Wales, but lawyers in Malta can ask the courts to consider the sentence in terms of Malta's constitutional law.

Legally, the ECHR ruled years ago that states can lock up dangerous killers forever. Now it says that the prisoner must get a chance to prove at some point that they are reformed.

The three applicants, convicted murderers Jeremy Bamber, Douglas Vinter and Peter Moore, claimed that being denied any prospect of release was a violation of Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The court found that for a life sentence to remain compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights there had to be both a possibility of release and a possibility of review.

The judges said: "Moreover, if such a prisoner is incarcerated without any prospect of release and without the possibility of having his life sentence reviewed, there is the risk that he can never atone for his offence: whatever the prisoner does in prison, however exceptional his progress towards rehabilitation, his punishment remains fixed and unreviewable.

"If anything, the punishment becomes greater with time: the longer the prisoner lives, the longer his sentence."