Sergeant cleared of deleting Sheehan shooting report

Police Sergeant Leeroy Balzan has been cleared of deleting part of an internal police incident report related to a 2014 shooting involving the police driver of a former minister for home affairs.

The sergeant was arraigned in November 2014 and pleaded not guilty to tampering with evidence relating to the shooting incident involving the PC Paul Sheehan, driver of the home affairs minister at the time, lawyer Manuel Mallia.

The deletion was alleged to have occurred on November 22 between 1pm and 2pm at the Sliema police station.

MaltaToday first reported the deletion of the report back on Sunday, 30 November but did not highlight the name of the accused. The newspaper had reported that details in the arrest report for Stephen Smith had been deleted from the original version on the police computer system, and that the matter was under inquiry.

In a judgment handed down earlier this morning, Magistrate Doreen Clarke noted that the accused had consistently said that he had accessed the PIRS report after a call from the police's media liaison asking for details of where Stephen Smith and Paul Sheehan were being held and had highlighted parts of it to be able to see them better.

He could not remember whether he had closed the report after the phonecall ended but insisted that he had not deleted any part of it. Doing so would have been "madness" because of the audit trail connected to such reports, he had said.

The court noted that the crucial point at issue was whether the accused had been at the police station when the report was deleted. The prosecuction had claimed that the person best placed to answer that question was PC5 Luke Busuttil, who had been there with the accused.

“Unfortunately, this witness was not very credible.. due not only to his comportment whilst testifying but also because of discrepancies in the versions he gave,” the court noted.

PC Busuttil had said in his statement that all the officers of the previous watch had left between 13:15 and 13:30 that day and that the accused had been there when he had been taking down the report. His second statement said that the accused had left while he was taking down the report and then, he had told the court that the accused had left after he had finished taking down the report.

The court found similar discrepancies with other witnesses' statements. There were also CCTV footage which shows the accused walking in Rudolph Street, Sliema at 1:24pm, which was consistent with the version of events given by the accused.

Noting that the evidence was inconclusive and due to the fact that the prosecution must prove a case beyond reasonable doubt, whilst the accused needed only to prove his allegations on a balance of probabilities, the court said the defence had the more convincing case.

The court cleared Balzan of computer misuse, preventing the input of data, changing, deleting or adding official data, committing crimes damaging to the government, prejudicing his senior and committing a crime he was duty bound to prevent.

Balzan, however, received a one-year conditional discharge for revealing a password granting access to official files to unauthorised personnel. The court noted that the fact that no steps had apparently ever been taken against any members of the police force for sharing passwords – a practice the force used at the time – this did not mean that the accused was innocent, but only served to mitigate punishment.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri were defence counsel. Inspector Sandro Camilleri and Jesmond Micallef prosecuted.