Sentence for man involved in young woman's drug-related death reduced after 21 years

The Court of Criminal Appeal has drastically reduced the sentence handed to Lawrence Attard for his part in the death of Theresa Agius in 1999 and the trafficking and possession of heroin because of delays in closing the case.

Agius, 20, had died of an overdose of heroin allegedly purchased from Attard in October 1999. Agius had been reported missing and her body was eventually found at sea. A friend of hers had told the police he had seen her overdose on heroin after a man injected her with drugs.

In 2013, Attard, known as Wenzu l-Għawdxi, was found guilty of involuntary homicide and supplying the heroin and was sentenced to six years in jail, as well as being ordered to pay a fine of €10,000. Joseph Azzopardi was later convicted of administering the fatal dose to Agius and was convicted of murder, a decision confirmed on appeal in 2018.

After being found guilty Attard had filed an appeal arguing that the court had interpreted the facts of the case wrongly, leading to it drawing the mistaken conclusion that he had been the one that sold the drugs to Agius.

The Court of Criminal Appeal had ordered the case to be retried after it was noted that amongst other things, the court of first instance had erroneously referenced the wrong article of the law at several points in the judgment.

Handing down judgment in the case, Madame Justice Edwina Grima observed that the case had taken 21 years to reach this stage. Two Constitutional cases had been filed due to the excessive duration of the proceedings and it was noted that despite the Constitutional Court ruling that the court of Magistrates decide the case without delay in 2004, the lower court had only passed its final sentence in 2013. That sentence had subsequently been annulled, leading the case to be re-heard from the beginning.

Attard had consistently denied procuring the drugs and insisted that there was no link established between the cause of Agius’ death and the overdose, due to the advanced state of decomposition the body was found to be in. He contended that the only two witnesses who linked him to the crime, Philippa Chircop and Paul Micallef, had contradicted each other’s testimony.

The judge, examining the acts of the proceedings, said there was no doubt that Agius had gone to the accused and Chircop to buy drugs before her death and had done so regularly. Several witnesses had confirmed that Agius did not know how to administer the drugs herself and so was injected by Joseph Azzopardi, known as Iz-Zikizokk.

In his testimony the appellant had claimed that drugs would be sold daily from Chircop’s apartment, where the appellant also resided, but denied that he had procured the drugs for Agius on the night of her death.

The court however observed that the evidence all seemed to point in the opposite direction, in particular the testimony of Micallef, who claimed to have warned Agius that it was potentially fatal for Azzopardi to inject Agius with heroin as she had also ingested pills containing  the sedative “Dalmain.” Micallef’s testimony was corroborated by forensic evidence, said the court.

It also dismissed the assertion that the cause of Agius’ death could not be established due to the advanced state of decomposition her body was found in, making reference to the findings in the case against Joseph Azzopardi which stated that there were fresh needle puncture wounds in one of the veins of her hand and that high levels of morphine – a metabolate of heroin – were found in her liver.

The circumstantial evidence, tied to Micallef’s testimony, led the court to conclude that the victim died of an overdose of drugs injected into her by Joseph Azzopardi, which drugs had just been purchased from Lawrence Attard. The conviction was therefore, upheld.

On the delay in deciding the case, the judge noted that the appeal case was transferred to her in January 2019, after being presided by a different judge and then had to be retried owing to a legal mistake made by the first court. These delays had to be kept in mind, but at the same time could not translate into a failure to have the guilty party pay for his misdeeds, she said. While observing that Attard had changed his ways, the judge said that a prison sentence for drug trafficking was compulsory. The court also took into account the long period spent in preventive arrest – nearly two years.

Taking into account all the circumstances of the case, the court said it would hand down a punishment in the lower range of the spectrum, in order to make good for both the breach of his rights and the criminal action which led to the death of a young woman.

Attard’s sentence was therefore reduced to 2 years imprisonment and a fine of €1000. Time spent in preventive custody was to be deducted from the prison term. €958 in costs were to be borne by the appellant.

Lawyer Edward Gatt appeared for Lawrence Attard.