Technicality spares man jail term for false declaration on bumper-to-bumper form

An eight-month prison sentence for giving false details on a front-to-rear traffic collision form has been overturned after a Court of Appeal noted that the conviction had been made under the wrong article of the law.

Dennis Cilia, 46, had been jailed for eight months in 2016, after being convicted of making a false declaration in the collision form, making a false declaration to a public authority, making use of a falsified document and relapsing.

After the accident in St Catherine Street, Attard, in May 2012, the man had allegedly given incorrect information on the front-to-rear form.

Police had pressed charges after the other party in the collision, reported being informed by his insurer that the details on the form did not match the registered driver and the wrong insurance company had been specified.

Cilia had categorically denied falsifying any documents or giving false information and had explained that, because he is illiterate, the other party had filled in the form for him, using information which he had dictated.

The end result was a form which gave an incorrect address, ID card number and wrong insurance company, the defence claimed.

A court of magistrates did not accept this argument and had sentenced Cilia to eight months’ imprisonment under section 185 of the criminal code, which deals with falsifications carried out by public servants. The lower court did not convict him of the second charge, that of knowingly making false declarations in a document intended for someone other than a public authority, under section 188 of the code.

Cilia had filed appeal, arguing that the Court of Magistrates had made an incorrect interpretation of the law.

In her decision, handed down yesterday, Judge Edwina Grima, presiding the Court of Criminal Appeal noted that the offence did not satisfy the parameters of the part of the criminal code which deals with false declarations to a public authority, because an insurance company could not be construed to be a public authority.

“If anything, the appellant is guilty of making false declarations to a public authority under article 188, as the appellant allegedly made the false declarations knowingly in a document intended for someone other than a public authority” the court said, and therefore could have been punished with a fine.

Noting that at no point had the Attorney General alleged that the first court's decision was juridically and legally incorrect in its interpretation of the law, the Court of Appeal said its hands were tied by the first court's acquittal and that it could not find guilt for a charge that the appellant had been cleared of and which had not been the subject of an appeal.

Quoting case law on the matter, the court also disagreed with the eight month prison sentence which it said did not “create a balance between the retributive and reformative aspect that is the subject of so much emphasis in criminal justice today.”

Cilia was declared not guilty.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia were defence counsel.