Jail term for ‘unsafe and unsatisfactory’ cocaine conviction slashed to a fine on appeal

The court of appeal has slashed a man's three-year sentence for cocaine trafficking to a €2,000 fine for simple possession after upholding the argument that the first court's reasoning had been “unsafe and unsatisfactory.”

Paul Philip Caruana, 47, of Mosta had been jailed for three years and fined €2,000 after he was found guilty of being in possession of cocaine which did not appear to be solely for his exclusive use.

The Maltese-Australian had been stopped at a roadblock in Qormi in August 2004. Inside Caruana’s Peugeot 106, the police had found two sachets containing 14.69 grams of cocaine with 40% purity and LM1,097 in cash.

The accused had insisted that the drugs were for his personal use, telling the court that he had bought 15 grams of cocaine because he was going to Gozo for two weeks and needed to sustain his habit.



However, the court of magistrates had ruled that the accused’s version of events were inconsistent with his drug use. Magistrate Marseanne Farrugia had said that, given Caruana’s habitual drug abuse, his body would not have tolerated 15 grams of drugs in such a short amount of time – more so because he had told the court that he was deterred from abusing of drugs due to headaches and hangovers.

"The magistrate had observed that 10 grams would have been 'more than sufficient' for 12 days and held that the absence of a tube for the consumption of cocaine was evidence that it was not intended for his personal use," lawyer Joe Giglio pointed out in his appeal application.

The lawyer argued that the judgement “raised the serious concern that the court of first instance, with all due respect, has no knowledge of the subject of drug taking.”

“To consume cocaine you require no tools...All that you need is a nose and a surface,” Giglio had submitted, arguing that the “gratuitous assertions” had undermined the possibility of mounting a successful defence.

In his judgment, reducing the sentence, Judge David Scicluna observed that the law did not set out the minimum amount of drugs for personal use to be ruled out, in order to allow every case to be decided on its particular merits.

The first court had been sceptical as to how the accused could consume two or three grams in a weekend, insisting that his body could not tolerate so much cocaine, which had been of an abnormally high 40% purity.

Judge Scicluna, however, pointed out that drug users generally would not know the purity of the substances they consume and that the appellant was “undoubtedly” tolerant to the purity as he would buy drugs from the same person.

Furthermore, the judge said, “there is nothing unbelievable in the explanation that a drug user would stock up [on drugs] in advance of a holiday in Gozo, where he probably would not know the market.”

Had the Caruana intended to consume one gram daily, then 10 grams would not have been sufficient as he was going to spend longer than 10 days, the court observed, pointing out that it was not possible to predict the amount of projected drug use mathematically. “And even if the appellant did not consume everything, is it not evident that he would bring the remainder back with him to Malta?” the judge asked.

He agreed with the defence's argument that no tools were needed to insufflate cocaine and even if a tube was needed, it could easily be improvised by using everyday items.

The court also noted that the appellant had also testified to having given the police the telephone number and particulars of the person who had sold him the drugs and that this person had subsequently been arrested.

Taking this and other evidence into consideration, the court of criminal appeal said it was of the opinion that the first court could not have reasonably reached the conclusion that the drugs had not been for the man's personal use only.

After taking into consideration his assistance with the investigation, the court reduced his original sentence, that of three years imprisonment and a fine of €2,000, to just the fine.

Lawyers Joe Giglio and Stephen Tonna Lowell appeared for Caruana.