CCTV footage not clear enough for conviction in 2012 Fuego bottle attack

A 27-year-old man has been cleared of repeatedly hitting an off-duty police officer in the face with a broken glass in a St. Paul's Bay bar fight after a court held that it had been shown insufficient evidence to convict him.

St. Paul's Bay resident Clint Dalton had been charged in connection with the incident at Fuego in his hometown in August 2012.  

Magistrate Joe Mifsud heard how Dalton had allegedly caused grievous injuries to Vincent Cutajar, who had intervened to stop a fight at the bar. Dalton had also been charged with threatening Cutajar, breaching the peace and relapsing.

Dalton is no stranger to the courts, having been jailed in 2014 for a string of burglaries.

News reports of Dalton's 2012 arraignment, recount how Police Inspector Trevor Micallef had told the court that the CCTV system at Fuego, had “clearly showed Dalton out beyond his curfew and involved in a fight with a police officer,” on the night of August 25, 2012. The reports describe Dalton as a "person well known to the police." 

“The officer, police constable Vince Cutajar, said he had gone to Fuego to split up a fight and ended up being attacked by a group of people. He recognised Mr Dalton as one of them,” the inspector is reported as having told the court during the man's arraignment.

But Magistrate Mifsud, who had been assigned the case a long time after it had started being heard by another magistrate, noted that contrary to the inspector's comments during the arraignments, the evidence presented did not clearly point to the guilt of the accused.

The court held that, after viewing the CCTV footage and photographs of the incident and its aftermath, the prosecution had failed to prove its case, and that the defence had successfully created reasonable doubt as to whether the grievous injuries had actually been caused by the accused.

The other charges; of assault, insulting and threatening Cutajar and breaching the peace were, likewise, given short shrift by the court. 

In the sentence, Magistrate Mifsud pointed out that for there to be a breach of the peace, the actions of the accused "must be such as to objectively instil a minimum of worry or concern about the possibility of physical injury in the mind of bystanders.”

“There is no doubt that this was [also] absent in this case,” the court held.

Inspectors Jessica Abela and Joseph Busuttil prosecuted.