Court is not daycare for criminals' children, magistrate says

Criminals cannot hold up their children as reasons to mitigate punishment, a court has ruled as it sentenced a widower from Sliema to eight months imprisonment for stealing.

This was conviction number 31 for a 57-year-old man, a career criminal who has previously served time in prison for theft, fraud and forgery.

In his latest case, the man had been charged in connection with a break-in at a Ta' Qali warehouse operated by Ceramart in April 2008, after the police found his fingerprints at the scene. Debattista was called in for questioning after the police were informed of the fingerprint match in 2013.

During his interrogation, he had admitted to carrying out the break-in and was subsequently charged. 

From the witness stand last July, the accused had claimed to have been playing football with his children near the warehouse on the day of the crime. While retrieving a football which had broken a window and ended up inside the warehouse, he had helped himself to seven boxes of shades from the warehouse which, he said, he thought was abandoned. He told the court that he had intended to sell them at the open air market.

The defence had argued that the appropriation of abandoned objects did not qualify as theft.

The court was not convinced that the objects had been abandoned, however. Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera noted that important details in his story had changed – he had first told police that he had noticed the open warehouse door after taking his children home.

While the warehouse had been neglected, it had not been abandoned, the magistrate said. The charge of theft stood.

Noting his long list of previous convictions, the court observed that the accused had not used the opportunities afforded to him by his previous suspended sentences and probation orders. A custodial sentence was inescapable in this case, the magistrate said.

The defence's claims that the accused had since changed his ways and was the sole living parent to three young children due to his wife's passing drew little sympathy from the court.

Magistrate Scerri Herrera did not mince her words as she condemned the man to eight months imprisonment. The accused had brought the situation upon himself, she said, insisting that "this court is not here to take care of the children of people who insist on leading a life of crime."