Perjury conviction declared null due to missing date, judge orders resentencing

A clerical error has led to a court judgement, finding a man guilty of perjury, being sent back to the Court of Magistrates after it was declared null.

Mr. Justice Neville Camilleri, presiding the Court of Criminal Appeal, yesterday ruled that the absence of a date being specified in the judgement finding Danny David Doneo guilty of perjury rendered it null and sent the acts of the case back to the court of magistrates for the judgement to be reissued.

Doneo had been arraigned in court back in 2017, accused of falsifying a court decree, bigamy, and judicial perjury. The court had heard how the man had contracted a second marriage in August 2002 on the strength of a court decree, which purported to have dissolved his first. That document, however, turned out to have been a forgery. 

The anomaly had only been noticed in 2016 when Doneo's first wife had tried to renew her passport.

In October 2022 the court of Magistrates declared Doneo not guilty of forgery, making a false declaration to a public authority, falsifying a private writing and bigamy.

He was, however, convicted of perjury and was sentenced to four months in prison, suspended for 18 months and ordered to suffer the costs of appointing court experts.

The Attorney General subsequently filed an appeal, in view of the fact that the Court of Magistrates had failed to also apply the punishment of general interdiction, which should follow a conviction for perjury. 

But Mr. Justice Neville Camilleri, presiding the Court of Criminal Appeal, was unable to delve into the merits of the appeal, after observing that the judgement being appealed only specified the month and year and not the precise date on which it was handed down. 

The judge said that while jurisprudence had established that not every mistake or imprecision in a judgement automatically led to its nullity, specifying the date of sentencing was not simply a formality, but an essential part of the substance of the judgement. 

The specification of a precise date was required for the observation of the correct administration of justice, said the judge, because it restricted the peremptory time frame in which an appeal could be filed.

In order not to deprive the appellant of his right to file an appeal on the merits, the judge sent the acts of the proceedings back to the court of Magistrates. Judge Camilleri specified that the judgement was not declaring the proceedings before the first court to be null in their entirety, but was returning the appellant to the position he was in immediately before the original sentence was pronounced.

Lawyer Matthew Xuereb assisted Doneo in the proceedings.