Keith Pace proceedings annulled over defective admission

Keith Pace has had criminal proceedings against him sent back to the Court of Magistrates after the Criminal Court of Appeal found that the admission on which his conviction rested had not been recorded in the manner required by law.

The case concerned an appeal filed by Pace on a judgement delivered by the Court of Magistrates in 2023.

Pace had faced a lengthy list of charges linked to offences allegedly committed in 2015. These included the aggravated theft of electrical tools between 23 and 24 June 2015, voluntary damage to property during the same period, and the theft of further electrical tools on various occasions to the detriment of Environmental Landscapes Consortium.  He was also charged with related criminal damage in connection with those incidents.

Further charges included knowingly receiving or handling stolen goods on 1 July 2015 and during the preceding months, insulting, threatening or injuring a woman, unlawfully interfering with her possession of property while allegedly attempting to enforce a claimed right.

He was also charged with escaping from police custody on a separate occasion, driving dangerously at excessive speed, attacking or violently resisting a public officer acting in the execution of the law, and failing to obey lawful police orders.

He was also accused of breaching several sets of bail conditions imposed by different magistrates in 2013, breaching a conditional discharge and recidivism.

Pace had entered an admission to the charges. Rather than imposing a prison term, the court placed him under a three-year probation order.

In addition, the court ordered the forfeiture in favour of the government of several bail-related sums previously imposed on Pace amounting to €16,000.

The appeal

Keith Pace appealed the judgement, asking the Criminal Court of Appeal to confirm the conviction but reform the punishment, arguing that the sanctions imposed were excessive in the circumstances.

Pace objected to the parts of the sentence ordering the forfeiture of the various deposits and personal guarantees.

He argued that prosecution had never asked the court to order confiscation of that deposit and guarantee, and so the first court should not have acted of its own initiative.

Since the relevant conditions of bail were never formally exhibited, meaning the court could not properly order forfeiture of the guarantee, it had never been confirmed by the deputy registrar or the inspector in charge of the case whether those bail conditions were still in force.

Pace also argued that, in light of the progress he was making in his life, the first court could have exercised its discretion and ordered only partial confiscation of the sums rather than forfeiting them in full.

The attorney general opposed the appeal and asked the Court of Appeal to reject it entirely and confirm both the sentence and the orders made by the lower court.

Although the appeal was formally limited to sentence, the Court of Appeal examined the procedural history of the case and found a serious issue concerning the recording of the appellant’s admission.

Previous judgement and appeal

This particular case had already been decided once before. On 8 October 2018 Pace had registered an admission and the court proceeded to sentence.

The sentence was previously appealed by the Attorney General and on January 2019,  the Court of Appeal, differently composed, annulled it because the first court had not strictly followed procedural requirements. The acts were sent back to the Magistrates’ Court so that the accused would be placed in the same position he had been in immediately before the earlier sentence and so that a fresh judgment could be delivered according to law.

The case was later decided again on 17 January 2023, which is the judgment under appeal in this case. That court reasoned that since Keith Pace had registered an admission on 8 October 2018 and had never withdrawn it in the subsequent sittings, he remained in the same position as before and had therefore admitted all charges against him without reservation. On that basis, it found him guilty of all charges.

Court’s findings

The Court of Appeal found a major flaw in this reasoning.

It observed that although it was not disputed that Pace had indeed made an admission, nothing in the procedural record showed that the court had followed the mandatory procedure laid down in the law.

Under that procedure, the court must solemnly warn the accused of the legal consequences of the admission, give the accused some time to reconsider and withdraw it and only if the accused persists in the admission may the plea be registered and the court proceed to sentence.

The court said that this procedure must be followed scrupulously because once validly registered, such an admission becomes the strongest possible proof of guilt.

It stressed that if the court records do not show that the statutory safeguards were followed, then any finding of guilt based on such an admission is defective and null.

The court record of 8 October 2018 merely stated that an admission had been registered and did not follow any of these procedures. Even the appealed 2023 judgment did not state that the admission had been confirmed after the required warning and reflection period. Therefore, the court concluded that the admission had not been validly recorded under law.

The court said that the fact that Pace never withdrew the admission did not cure the defect. The law required more than silence or inaction but required that the admission be registered in the manner prescribed by law and that this appear clearly from the court record.

This was an essential procedural safeguard, the defect amounted to a serious nullity, which the court was bound to raise ex officio even though neither party had challenged the admission itself.

For these reasons, the Court of Appeal did not go on to examine the merits of Keith Pace’s complaint about sentence. The court declared the proceedings null and void from the sitting of 8 October 2018 onward and ordered that the acts be remitted to the Court of Magistrates so that the proceedings may continue according to law.

Inspector James Grech prosecuted. Defence lawyers Franco Debono, Marion Camilleri and Adreana Zammit appeared for Keith Pace. The judgment was delivered by Judge Natasha Galea Sciberras