Criminal Court confirms bail conditions for careworker accused of stealing €90,000

The criminal court has turned down the Attorney General's request that it revoke as unconstitutional an order which effectively imposed house arrest on a care home worker accused of stealing over €90,000 from an elderly resident.

On 26 April, Magistrate Claire Stafrace Zammit ordered 55-year-old care worker Michelina Grech not to leave her residence pending court proceedings after she was charged with helping herself to over €90,000 belonging to an 89-year old woman who lives at the care home where Grech worked, using the resident's chequebook .

Police Inspector Yvonne Farrugia had charged the Rabat housewife with misappropriation, fraud and theft. During that sitting, the prosecution requested that bail be refused until the elderly woman and her brother testify.

But Grech's defence lawyers Franco Debono, Martin Fenech and Amadeus Cachia contested the charges and requested bail, which was subsequently granted against a deposit of €1,000 and a personal guarantee of €15,000.

But the court also ordered the woman not leave her brother's residence for reasons other than an emergency.

However, less than 48 hours after this decree, the Attorney General filed an application to the Criminal Court, requesting the revocation of Grech's bail on the grounds that the bail condition was not legal and indeed, anti-constitutional.

Grech's lawyers, however, submitted that their client had been happy with the conditions as imposed.

If Grech's rights had been breached, the prerogative to raise it was hers and hers alone, they argued.

In his decree, Mr. Justice Antonio Mizzi agreed with this argument and turned down the Attorney General's request.

The judge held that the concept of house arrest was not expressly excluded from Maltese criminal law and was fundamentally different from detention under arrest at Corradino prisons.

Whilst it restricts the movements of the accused, “[house arrest] has the salutary advantage of leaving the accused with her family and her effects.”