Judge slams 'blind faith' in notification practices

A judge has moved to nip in the bud unorthodox methods of notifying judicial acts that appear to be developing, as he ordered the release from arrest of a man who was detained on Thursday for failing to turn up for an appeal that he had filed himself.

On Thursday a magistrate's court had ruled that it was unable to grant bail to Joseph Pisani, who had been detained at Msida police station whilst signing his bail book the day before, because he had not attended a sitting in an appeal case.

Pisani had been on bail after filing an appeal against a sentence of two months’ imprisonment which he had been handed for failing to pay maintenance to his former partner. He was arrested when he went to sign his bail book, being told that because he had failed to appear for a court sitting on 13 March, his appeal had been declared abandoned and his prison sentence, therefore, confirmed.

Pisani insisted that he was never informed of the date of the sitting. By law, person has a right to file an application requesting the reappointment of an abandoned appeal within four days, but this period had long since elapsed.

Pisani's lawyer Franco Galea had filed a writ of habeas corpus on Thursday, asking the court to order the man's release, together with an application for the reappointment of the appeal.
But bail was refused on Thursday, the court saying that it was the Court of Criminal Appeal, and not the duty magistrate, that was competent to rule on the matter.

In a decision handed down this morning, the Court of Criminal Appeal, with judge Giovanni Grixti presiding, observed that the court usher who had been entrusted with delivering the summons to Pisani's home had been unable to find him at the address provided. The usher told the court that she had then called the Msida police station and an officer whose number she did not request, had confirmed that the summons had been handed to Pisani on 4 March.

A constable from that police station testified to having handed the notification to Pisani but had not asked him to sign for it because that was a practice reserved for cases before the Court of Magistrates. He was unable to confirm that the document he handed the man was in fact the notice of the appeal sitting.

“It is evident from what has been said that there is a serious element of uncertainty about the usher's report about the delivery of the summons,” the judge said. “This court cannot accept the usher's report as a valid one with tranquility, more so when the consequential failure of the appellant to appear led to his imprisonment. The correctness of this report is a vital one in these procedures and therefore, once it emerged that the allegation is true, this court will uphold the applicant's request.”

The court observed that a practice had evolved whereby telephonic confirmation was substituting actual, physical verification. “This is wrong and it is also wrong that a party accepts to be notified by a notice delivered at the police station, for collection and not asked to leave a receipt for the document he received, with the consequence that everything happens on the basis of blind faith.”

Stressing that this pronouncement was not intended to cast a shadow over the police or court officials, the judge ordered the Registrar of Courts to take the necessary steps to avoid this situation from repeating itself.

The judge revoked the previous decree that declared his appeal abandoned and ordered Pisani's immediate release.

Lawyer Franco Galea was legal counsel to Pisani.