Freed arsonist to return to jail after appeals court increases his sentence

A man who had served his sentence for arson after setting fire to a front door will have to serve another 18 months in prison after a court increased his punishment, following an appeal by the Attorney General.

Madame Justice Edwina Grima, presiding the Court of Criminal Appeal, upheld an appeal by the AG against Martin Marco Baldacchino who had been jailed over an arson attack in 2011.

The man had set fire to the front door of a family home in Qormi, using a T-shirt soaked in petrol, apparently in return for a dose of heroin. The family had been inside the house at the time, together with workmen maintaining telecommunications apparatus installed on their roof.

Baldacchino had been jailed for 4 years and 6 months in 2016 after filing a last-minute guilty plea, right before his jury was empanelled.

He had appealed the sentence, but later withdrew it having subsequently been released from prison, after serving his sentence.

But the Attorney General had also filed an appeal, arguing that the sentence Baldacchino had been given was below the minimum stipulated at law.

Maltese law specifies a minimum prison term of six years and a maximum of 12 for arson unless there were special and extraordinary reasons to vary the punishment. The court had opted to sentence Baldacchino to less than the minimum as he had pleaded guilty, offered his cooperation and paid for the damage he had caused.

The judge noted that the law granted discretion to the appellate court to increase punishment when this was not within the parameters of the law, seeing that in Baldacchino’s case, the Criminal Court had awarded a punishment below the minimum, also in view of his breach of a probation order dating back to 2011.

“The appellant admits that he set fire to a residence’s front door, while knowing or could have known that there were people inside, as it resulted there was… Luckily the appellant was arrested by a plainclothes policeman who happened to be in the vicinity as he fled the scene and the fire was put out before spreading through the house.”

The court said its hands were tied and that it could not but apply the punishment laid down in the law, albeit at its “absolute minimum.”

The judge therefore abstained from ruling on the appeal against his sentence filed by Baldacchino as he had withdrawn it, and upheld the AG’s appeal, revoking the 4-and-a-half-year prison sentence and replacing it with a 6 year sentence. The rest of the appealed sentence was confirmed. Baldacchino was also sent before the court of Magistrates to be judged on his breach of a probation order