Briton appeals 10-year sentence for cannabis conviction

As protestors prepare to take to the streets on Saturday to demonstrate against the controversial court sentence and to call for decriminalisation of cannabis, Holmes's defence counsel Kenneth Grima is arguing in his appeal to the courts that the sentence was too excessive given that Holmes pleaded guilty to the charges.

"The Prosecution insisted Holmes was a drug pusher although no evidence whatever was produced to substantiate this... the Prosecution state that the accused lived in luxury, in a luxurious apartment, that he could afford to rent this luxurious apartment [and] that he never worked because he was living of the illicit proceeds from the sale of the plant. This could not be farther than the truth."

According to the appeal, Holmes's apartment and furniture are described as being "those of practically a pauper" and that it was his parents who paid his rent.

"Would a drug dealer, living in a foreign country and therefore seeking to appear free of problems, financial or otherwise, fail to pay his landlord for practically a whole year what was due to her in water and electricity bills, with the natural corollary that the landlord would seek judicial redress for this omission?"

The appeal also states that Holmes cooperated with the police, when he willingly led police officers without a search warrant to his house. "How could Mr Justice Quintano in his judgment say and take as proven that Mr Holmes was caught red-handed?"

The appeal also argues that the court sentence is based on the wrong assumption that the weight of the drugs was that of 1,063 grams when forensic expert Godwin Sammut said this included the main stems and roots. "If one were to subtract from it the weight of the stems and the roots, it would be substantially less, possibly even less than half as stems, stalks and roots normally weigh substantially more than the leaf of a plant."

Grima also states in the appeal that since the cannabis plants were in possession of both Holmes and Barry Lee, then Holmes ought to have been responsible only for the half of the cannabis found and never for the whole.

Holmes was in preventive arrest for a total period of some 14 months but in its judgement, the Criminal Court only deducted from this period a few days because the prosecution had insisted that the 14 months spent in prison by Holmes were not on account of this case, but on account of another case still pending against the accused before the Court of Magistrate in Gozo for the theft of a vehicle  and a dingy it was towing.

Grima claims the prosecution underhandedly requested the Court to revoke Holmes' bail under the lesser theft charge, instead of revoking his provisional liberty under the charge of cultivation, so Holmes does not benefit from the reduction of the time he spent in preventive custody.

Grima said the court had treated Holmes with "unnecessary harshness".

"No wonder the public criticism of this judgement when practically simultaneously with its deliverance all of Europe and indeed also our own country have decided to gradually de-penalise or at least treat in a much lesser heavy handed manner the possession and use of cannabis.

"Eleven and a half years of imprisonment without even reducing some fifteen months of Holmes's preventive arrest at the Corradino prison in Malta would make the accused being imprisoned to a total of nearly 13 years - when even persons found guilty of murder, attempted murder, the infliction of grievous bodily harm, rape, fraud of millions of euros have been sentenced on a regular basis to terms of imprisonment sometimes well under half the period of imprisonment accorded to the accused."