Man's conviction quashed over charge sheet error

A man convicted for handling stolen goods has walked out of courts a free man after his conviction was overturned on appeal because the wrong date had been specified in the charges.

Raymond Xerri had been arrested in January 2010 after the owner of an Isuzu pickup truck which had been stolen between 9th and 10th February 2009 had noted him driving a similar truck and filed a police report.

Xerri had been found guilty of handling stolen goods by the court of magistrates, which concluded that the accused had known the item was stolen because he bought it second hand for €500 despite the higher market value of the item, had purchased it from a person he didn't know and had not been given a receipt.

Xerri had filed an appeal against his conviction. His lawyer, Arthur Azzopardi, had argued that it had not been proven that the cargo bed on his truck had been stolen, much less that he had handled stolen goods. It was additionally argued that the punishment was excessively harsh, arguing that he should have been charged under a different section of the Criminal Code.

The defence also pointed out that the wrong date had been specified on the charges. The crime had occurred 4 days after the timespan specified in the charge sheet submitted during the man's arraignment.

Judge Edwina Grima, presiding the Court of Appeal noted that the testimony of the pickup truck's owner revealed that he had been afforded the opportunity to inspect the allegedly stolen item and had himself said that he “noticed more similarities.”

His identification of the cargo bed was “insufficient for a safe and satisfactory verdict,” held the court, also noting that the owner had claimed that the cargo bed was worth almost twice as much as a representative of the manufacturer had told the court.”

But above all, noted the court, the timeline specified in the charges did not add up. The 2010 date specified had been when the theft was reported, but the court had ample evidence that he had bought the item in November 2009, which it said, clearly could not be described as “in the days preceding” 24th January 2010.