Birzebbugia man cleared of 2012 snatch and grab robberies

The criminal court has found Joseph Xuereb from Birzebbugia not guilty of complicity in carrying out three street robberies on elderly women in 2012.

Xuereb, who has previous convictions for theft, had been indicted for complicity in theft aggravated by violence and the value of the items stolen, after allegedly acting as getaway driver for an unidentified accomplice who had ripped necklaces from around the necks of three elderly women, aged 82, 80 and 78, respectively. One victim suffered wrist fractures as a result.

The court had heard eyewitnesses recount how after the so-called “snatch and grab” thefts, the assailant had run down the road, getting into the passenger seat of a waiting blue Peugeot 405, allegedly with Xuereb behind the wheel.

But the court pointed out that in order for Xuereb to be convicted as an accomplice, the prosecution needed not only to prove the man's active participation in the crimes but also that he had agreed to carry out the theft – referred to as a “common design.”

It observed that the prosecution had apparently amalgamated these three robberies into one charge and had wrongly assumed that the evidence about one theft would be valid for the others. “The evidence that led to the accused being indicted was the fact that the vehicle belonged to him and that he had told the police that only he would drive the vehicle that had allegedly been spotted close to the scene of two of the robberies in Sliema and the one in Tarxien.

“This means there fore that the prosecution based its case on circumstantial evidence and there is no direct evidence connecting the accused to these crimes,” the court observed.

One eyewitness had testified that the getaway vehicle's registration number was IAT687 and the car was a Peugeot 405

CCTV footage and stills were collected from surrounding shops but some were not exhibited in the compilation of evidence.

The vehicle did not feature in CCTV footage of two of the incidents and in the Tarxien theft, the CCTV footage had not even been exhibited.

The judge described the evidence against the man as “rather weak and which do not satisfy the legal requirement for a conviction”

It pointed out that circumstantial evidence should be secondary evidence, used only when the better evidence was not available. Worse, the evidence did not all point in the same direction, noted the judge.

There was nothing to tie the accused to the crime, other than his admission that the Peugeot was his and that the car had been in Sliema, where he would drive his wife to work, at the time. “This could only lead to conjecture and suppositions but not to prove facts.”

In its judgement exonerating Xuereb, madame justice Edwina Grima said that the law establishes clear rules that must be scrupulously observed for the finding of guilt, the court said. “Even if for the sake of the argument this court were to believe that the accused's vehicle was really present at the scene of the two thefts in Sliema and Tarxien...and also if for the sake of the argument this court were to believe that the accused had been present in that vehicle... there would still remain the issue of the common design...From where does this agreement between the accused and the perpetrator emerge?”

Lawyers Arthur Azzopardi and Franco Debono were defence counsel.