|
Matthew Vella
A university lecturer who was found to have been discriminated against for being obstinately listed as juror for over 30 years, is still being listed in the upcoming jury service for January 2007 despite a decision by the European Court of Human Rights.
University lecturer Maurice Zarb Adami is listed once again as jury foreman for next month’s jury service – which he will not attend – irrespectively of the Strasbourg court’s decision that he had effectively forcefully made to perform jury service.
As a university lecturer, Zarb Adami is also exempt from jury service but his petitions before the domestic courts had all proved futile before taking the matter to the ECHR in 2002.
“Obviously these people at the law courts drawing up these lists have no idea of what they are doing. As a university lecturer I am exempt from serving as a juror,” Zarb Adami told MaltaToday.
The ECHR had ordered the Maltese government to pay Zarb Adami EUR7,752 in costs after finding a violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on forced labour and slavery. Zarb Adami had claimed the Maltese jury service discriminated between women and men because more male jurors had been called to perform their civic duty.
The jury service is in fact notorious for its discrimination between men and women. In 1997 the number of male jurors, 7,503, was three times that of females, 2,494. The year before only 147 women were placed on the lists of jurors, as opposed to 4,298 men. The Strasbourg court said it was “struck by the fact that in 1996, 5 women and 174 men served as jurors.”
Since 1971, Zarb Adami has been placed on the list of jurors and continues to remain on the list to this day, despite the European Court’s judgement. He served as both a juror and foreman in three different sets of criminal proceedings.
In 1997 he refused to serve as a juror and was fined Lm100. Zarb Adami refused to pay the fine, and was summoned before the Criminal Court, where he argued that others in his position were not subjected to the duties of jury service and that the law exempted women from jury service, but not men. His case was referred to the Civil Court, where Zarb Adami claimed the Maltese system penalised men and favoured women. Between 1992 and 1997, only 3% of women had served as jurors, while in 1997 the list of jurors represented only 3.4% of the list of voters.
In 1999, the Civil Court rejected his claims, but Zarb Adami appealed, stressing that jury service was a burden, requiring jurors to leave their work to attend court hearings, and that it imposed a moral burden to judge the innocence or guilt of a person. His appeal was also rejected by the Constitutional Court.
Then in 2003, as a lecturer at the University of Malta, he unsuccessfully sought exemption from jury service, since the Criminal Code exempts full-time university lecturers from jury service. He was again summoned to serve as a juror in another trial in 2004. Again his application to be exempted was refused.
He successfully petitioned the European Court of Human Rights in 2002, complaining he was the victim of discrimination on the ground of sex, and that he was obliged to face criminal proceedings on an imposition of a discriminatory jury service.
In June 2006, the court found a violation of Article 14 on forced labour and slavery, and declared that the government of Malta pay Zarb Adami EUR7,752.
|
