‘Free Daniel Holmes campaign’ intensifies following contradictory court rulings

A number of contradictory sentences handed down by the courts of justice in recent weeks have added renewed impetus to a campaign calling for the release of Daniel Holmes, 40 from Wales, currently serving an 11-year sentence at Corradino Correctional Facility (CCF) for cultivation of five marijuana plants in 2006.

After awaiting trial for five years, Holmes was convicted in 2011 of cultivation of five marijuana plants. He pleaded guilty to cultivation for personal use; but it is debatable whether he was advised at the time that Maltese law does not actually distinguish between 'cultivation' and 'trafficking' - and even if no evidence was produced to prove that he had sold any drugs, Holmes was nonetheless convicted of trafficking, which entails a mandatory prison sentence.

His guilty plea appears to have had no bearing on his sentence, which was close to the maximum that can be imposed by the magistrates' court.

Another Briton imprisoned in connection with the same offence - Barry Lee - has since committed suicide in prison. The results of the inquest, if any, have never been made public.

Holmes' final appeals court hearing has now been set for 31 October - having earlier been deferred from July - and a number of organisations will be holding a protest next Saturday calling for his immediate release from prison, and for the adoption of a more commonsense approach to drug legislation by the authorities.

Moviment Graffitti and Alternattiva Demokratika - The Green Party, together with prisoners' rights advocacy group Mid-Dlam ghad-Dawl will be holding the demonstration next Saturday at City Gate, Valletta, starting 11.30am.

Apart from protesting against the severity of the sentence handed down to Holmes, and calling for a realistic reform of Malta's drug legislation regime, the campaigners have also expressed consternation and incredulity at a number of contradictory decisions taken recently by the law courts, which they claim undermine the credibility of Maltese justice as a whole.

While Holmes was sentenced to 11 years despite his guilty plea, others accused of arguably much more serious crimes - including attempted murder, grievous bodily harm, and (in the most recent case) the intercepted sale of live ammunition to Libya - were treated to much lighter sentences, ostensibly because (like Holmes) they had 'co-operated with the police'.

Last week a man found guilty of causing grievous bodily harm by stabbing someone in the stomach was sentenced to a mere 18 months: less than 10% of the sentence meted to Holmes. Yesterday, a Gozitan man found guilty of attempting to sell 70,000 homemade bullets to unknown contacts in conflict-ridden Libya was handed a two-year sentence, suspended for four years, ostensibly because he 'co-operated' with the police.

These and other apparent cases of double standards sparked outrage among drug law reformists who argue that the courts of law apply different and nonsensical parameters when dealing with drug-related crime.

The discrepancy was not lost on Mel Holmes, Daniel's father, who commented online: "There is something seriously wrong with the system when a man who quite deliberately caused [grievous bodily harm] like this is given 18 months (as an afterthought); others who kill whilst drunk (on a legal substance) at the wheel of their car get two or three years; and Daniel, who preferred to spend quiet nights with a joint marvelling at the beauty of the universe is seen as a villain. It defies belief. No wonder so many good Maltese people are worried about the state of their country's legal system..."

Among those worried about precisely this situation is AD candidate Robert Callus, who is among the organisers of Saturday's protest.

Callus argues that such mixed messages sent out by the courts have the cumulative effect of eroding public trust in Maltese justice.

"The situation is getting worse over time," he told MaltaToday. "First of all, people are getting more and more upset with the unfairness of it all. And I do believe the Maltese people have a sense of what is just and what is not. Injustice bothers them."

The same scenario also gives people a sense of insecurity, he argues, as such injustices also affect them personally, even if directed at others.

The impact, he adds, is twofold.

"People know that, on one hand, it could be their own children who experiment with drugs and that the consequences of this are not just the physical and psychological effects of the drugs themselves but also very serious trouble with the law," he said, adding that in many cases, especially involving soft drugs, the legal consequences (including the risk of prison) can be more harmful than the drugs themselves.

"On the other hand, people don't feel protected from violent criminals who, unlike drug users, are treated with kid gloves."

Calls for decriminalisation

AD is to date the only political party that favours the decriminalisation of soft drugs. The Green Party proposes three main amendments to national drug legislation: namely, decriminalisation of personal use - whereby possession remains a crime at law, but is no longer punishable by prison sentences; the introduction of a classification system to distinguish between different drugs on the basis of their harmfulness to users and to society (Malta is the only EU country not to classify drugs at all). The third demand concerns anomalies within the law itself: for instance, Maltese law does not distinguish between cultivation and trafficking... as it had earlier failed to distinguish between importation and trafficking, with regrettable results (the law was amended after numerous embarrassing cases in which foreigners (such as Gisela Feuz, an 18-year-old Swiss student) were imprisoned over minuscule amounts of marijuana.

AD argues that, unless the amounts concerned indicate intention to sell, cultivation should be treated as possession, not a separate crime that carries penalties equivalent to trafficking.

Outside the political sphere, similar calls have been separately raised by Caritas: whose founder Mgr Victor Grech recently urged the authorities to stop treating drug users as criminals. Likewise, the government's own agency concerned with drug, alcohol and other addictions, Sedqa, has added its voice to the debater: with clinical director George Grech advising government to seriously consider decriminalisation, citing Portugal as a model.

Grech raised the alarm on the perceived failure of existing drug strategies at a conference in December 2011.

"Prison is not giving results - it's no secret there are drugs in prison, and we have come to learn that incarceration does not work in people who are purely drug addicts," Grech said.

Stressing the difference between 'decriminalisation' and 'legalisation', he said that drug users need medical help, not incarceration.

"We have to face this discussion soon, whether we want to or not. The truth is, our prison is already full enough," Grech said.

He referred to the Portuguese system, where all drugs - including heroin and cocaine - were decriminalised, resulting in a sharp decrease in problem drug use.

Elsewhere, a similar point was asired by the ongoing Justice Reform Commission, headed by retired European Court judge Giovani Bonello. In an interview with MaltaToday, Bonello admitted being unhappy with existing legal instruments to combat drug use.

"I don't want to give the impression that I'm in favour of drugs or anything like that, because I am not. But we do need to reconsider our current policy," he said. "Part of the problem is that for many years, popular perceptions about drugs were hysterical, and this prompted a political reaction. In a sense the legislature got carried away and started legislating to meet popular demand for tough sentences, rather than adopting a common-sense approach to the issue. Yet public opinion is not a very solid foundation to build laws on. If it were up to the general public to decide, we'd probably have the death penalty for a joint..."

The same principle extends beyond individual drug cases. Bonello argues that satisfying popular cravings for justice is not part of the law courts' job description.

"One immediate legislative change would be to distinguish between different drugs on the basis of their harmfulness. Personally I think we should also seriously consider substituting the present system, which often comes down like a million tonnes of bricks on minor drug-related offences, with a warning system for non-hardened personal users that does not involve the law courts at all. Not only will this be a fairer response to the crime, but it will relieve the courts of a lot of the pressure of unnecessary, time-consuming cases."

Such concerns are shared by the Free Daniel Holmes campaigners.

"In Saturday's protest, we are asking for the immediate release of Daniel Holmes," Callus pointed out.

"However we know there are numerous Maltese people not affiliated with the organisers who feel that such injustices are unacceptable in a civilised society. We would also like to make it clear that while Daniel Holmes is probably the most shocking case, and definitely the highest profile, this is not a one-off case. There are other victimless criminals like Holmes languishing in our prisons, and unless the laws are amended there will be more and more."