Court upholds conviction for cocaine possession but suspends sentence after rehabilitation success

The Criminal Court of Appeal has upheld the conviction of a man found guilty of drug-related offences.

However, noting his documented efforts at rehabilitation, the court exercised its discretion to suspend the sixteen-month prison sentence for four years.

In a judgment delivered on Friday by Madam Justice Edwina Grima, the Criminal Court of Appeal upheld the 2023 finding of guilt against Alfred Schembri for aggravated possession of cocaine, after determining that the drug was not held solely for his personal use.

The court’s decision followed a detailed re-examination of the evidence surrounding a 2007 Police operation which uncovered over fifty grams of cocaine, weighing scales, and other paraphernalia inside Schembri’s Msida apartment.

Schembri, who had been sentenced by the Court of First Instance to sixteen months’ imprisonment, appealed both the conviction and the severity of the punishment.

The Court of Appeal, however, concluded that the quantity and packaging of the drugs, together with the presence of two weighing scales and numerous empty plastic sachets, were incompatible with personal use.

The cocaine, which had an average purity of 54.3%, was divided into seventeen packets of near-identical weight, an arrangement which the Court described as “highly indicative of trafficking.”

During his appeal, Schembri admitted to long-term cocaine use, insisting that the drugs were intended solely to satisfy his own addiction. He told investigators that he had relapsed two months prior to his arrest and claimed to consume cocaine almost daily. In his testimony, he attributed his drug dependence to a difficult personal period, stating that he used the substance “to alleviate some of the sadness he had.”

The court, while taking note of these admissions, found that Schembri’s explanations were inconsistent with the scale of the operation discovered by the Police. In its ruling, the Court stated unequivocally that the procedural and forensic results “all point in one direction. namely that the drug found in the appellant’s possession was intended to be trafficked.”

Nevertheless, the Court gave due weight to Schembri’s progress in rehabilitation.

Citing reports issued by the Board of Rehabilitation of Persons Caught with Drugs in October 2024 and May 2025, the judgment noted that the Board was “satisfied with the appellant’s rehabilitation process and therefore closed his case successfully.”

The court accepted that the offence was “principally attributable to his dependence on the drug,” and consequently applied the mitigating provisions.

In reforming the sentence, the court maintained the term of sixteen months’ imprisonment but ordered that it be suspended for a period of four years. It further directed that the conviction shall not be taken into account for the purposes of issuing a certificate of conduct after three years, provided Schembri does not reoffend within that period.