Judge partially upholds convicted murderer’s appeal in case over prison blinding

The Court of Criminal Appeal has partially upheld an appeal filed by convicted murderer David Norbert Schembri over a case in which he was found guilty five years ago.

Schembri, who is serving a life sentence for the brutal murder of his ex-girlfriend, had partially blinded fellow inmate Noel Borg in a fight over insults to Borg’s deceased father in 2010. In 2015 he was found guilty of slashing the prison inmate's eyeball with a razor.

Schembri was convicted of grievous bodily harm and other charges and jailed for an additional seven years. Schembri had appealed, claiming self-defence.

In his appeal, he had also argued that the application of section 33A of the Criminal Code, increasing the punishment for offences committed by prisoners, had been added by the Court despite it not being mentioned by the Attorney General in his note of renvoi.

Schembri’s lawyers also submitted that he had already been punished for the razorblade incident, by being moved to the prison’s Division 6, “a place of punishment, where whoever is there has less privileges than other inmates and where also the environment is truly harsh.”

Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera observed that the law was clear in that the Court of Magistrates could not have found guilt under 33A as this was not included in the Attorney General’s note of renvoi. The judge described it as a “serious shortcoming” on the part of the first court.

The Court of Magistrates was bound to decide “exclusively on the crimes contemplated in the note of renvoi and nothing else.” Any other consideration beyond the crimes indicated by the Attorney General are manifestly beyond the scope of the court’s powers, said the judge.

For this reason, the court annulled the appealed sentence and sent the case back to the Court of Magistrates to rectify the mistaken reference to section 33A.