Erin Tanti will face jury over Lisa Maria Zahra homicide, loses appeal

The Court of Criminal Appeal has dismissed appeals by Erin Tanti’s legal team to the Bill of Indictment against the former drama teacher, clearing the way for his trial by jury.

Tanti is accused of the wilful homicide and with assisting the suicide of 15-year-old Lisa Maria Zahra, after the two were found at the bottom of Dingli cliffs on 19 March 2014. He is also accused of defiling her when she was still underage, at a time when he was also her teacher.

On the night of the tragic death, Tanti and Zahra had driven up to Dingli cliffs, after running away from Zahra’s family home where the two had spent the night, and over the course of the night planned to kill themselves.

Tanti had filed an appeal to the court’s rejection of his objections to the Bill of Indictment, protesting that the charges were inaccurate and “excessively dramatic”.

He had asked for the removal of any reference to alcohol, arguing that toxicology results proved that Zahra had not consumed alcohol, contrary to what had been alleged, and insisted that the Attorney General could not accuse him both of murder and with assisting a suicide, as the charges were alternative to each other.

Tanti also requested the cancellation of the charge relating to the possession of indecent photographs of a minor, as the photos in question had been found in Zahra’s mobile. He also demanded the removal of all of photographs of the victim from the indictment. 

In July 2017, presiding Judge Antonio Mizzi upheld a request by the defence to remove any reference that Zahra had consumed alcohol from the indictment, but turned down all of the other pleas and reiterated that the two counts of murder and assisting suicide were not alternative to one another.

The first court’s reasoning was upheld today by the Court of Criminal Appeal, presided by Chief Justice Silvio Camilleri, judge Joseph Zammit Mackeon and judge Edwina Grima.

The court of Criminal Appeal was none too pleased at the fact that Tanti’s appeal consisted of almost identical arguments to those made to the Criminal Court. The court’s remit was not to re-judge the submissions made before lower courts, it said, but to decide on arguments against that first decision, it said.

On his objection to what Tanti dubbed the “dramatization” of events by the Attorney General in the Bill of Indictment, the court observed that although the way the facts were laid out resembles a story, “it however, doesn’t emerge that they were dramatized as alleged by the appellant or that the AG decorated the truth to create an impression on the jury.”

Neither was it contradictory to have wilful homicide and assisted suicide on the same Bill of Indictment, as the two heads of indictment were separate scenarios on which the jury had to decide. The judges noted that the Criminal Court had ruled that “it isn’t the task of this court to examine the facts of the case as this was the remit of the jury.”

In any case, said the court with regards to this and the other objections raised, the trial judge will instruct the jury on how to correctly interpret the evidence and the submissions made before it.

The court turned down the appeal, noting that the jury, as judges of fact, will be given the necessary direction by the presiding judge. 

Lawyers Michael and Lucio Sciriha are defence counsel. Police Inspector Keith Arnaud is prosecuting.