Justice minister plans to replace police as prosecuting officers with dedicated lawyers

Compilation of evidence proceedings before criminal trials could eventually be scrapped in justice minister Owen Bonnici's continuous drive for streamlining the justice system.

Taking questions at the launch of a infrastructural project at the Valletta law courts, Bonnici pointed out that the current system whereby testimony was painstakingly compiled before a magistrate in pre-trial stages, only for witnesses to be re-examined before a jury “makes no sense.”

Bonnici pointed out that Britain had scrapped the compilation of evidence system during the Heath administration in 1967. Maltese criminal law doctrine borrows heavily from that of the UK. “Practitioners themselves will eventually come to the realisation that compilation proceedings are unnecessary,” Bonnici said. 

Bonnici said he also hopes to eventually replace police inspectors as prosecuting officers with dedicated pool of prosecuting lawyers.

A pilot project whereby a lawyer was engaged to conduct the prosecution of traffic offences had yielded positive results in the past eight months, he explained.

The minister said he hoped to expand this project to other courts, in time, once the concept gained traction amongst practitioners. “This will require a change in the law as well as a change in culture. The latter will likely be more challenging.”

The minister also appealed to young lawyers to consider opting for a career with the office of the Attorney General as prosecutors, saying that the AG will be recruiting five new lawyers to cope with its added workload.

The face of the Maltese criminal justice system would change dramatically if Bonnici's aims are realised.

“It is the commitment of both the Justice and Home Affairs Ministers to see through a smooth and incremental transition from the police-led prosecution system which we have today to a lawyer-based prosecution which is obtaining under practically all European jurisdictions.”

A lawyer-based prosecution system would not only to liberate crucial police resources from the corridors of the law courts to the street on the beat, but would expedite considerably criminal procedures.

Bonnici has also launched a pilot project where a lawyer who acted as prosecutor in Local Tribunal sittings, actively assisted police inspectors in traffic sittings before Magistrate. Francesco Depasquale.

“It was indeed a learning-curve. After months of fine-tuning and tweaking of internal procedures, it can be safely stated that the project led to very positive results and the next challenge is to extend this project to sittings involving compilation of evidence procedures,” Bonnici said.

But the minister also said that police inspectors cannot be replaced with lawyers as prosecutors before the Court of Magistrates, but lawyers can assist the police – reducing the commitment of police resources taken up by such prosecutions.

“Once the system be extended in such a manner that lawyers prosecute in the Court of Magistrates this would require, not only a change in legislation, but also an increase in the resources of legal staff at the Office of the Attorney General. This is something which we are planning ahead in terms of capacity building.”