Man acquitted of drug trafficking after court adopts latest position on police statements

A 30-year-old man from Fgura who had been arrested as he tried to flee police officers searching for contraband cigarettes, has been found guilty of drug possession after a magistrate’s court adopted the Constitutional Court’s latest stance on statements to police.

Anthony Zammit had been arrested back in 2013 when police and customs officers had carried out an inspection at the King Elvis Bar at Paola, in a crackdown on contraband cigarettes.

One of the Inspectors had noticed Zammit holding a packet of cigarettes which looked very similar to the contraband ones they had collected from other bars. But when the police approached the man, asking to see the cigarette packet, Zammit had made a run for it, sprinting out of the bar and up the road.

The police gave chase and observed him throwing several items away whilst running, one of which hit a chasing policeman in the face.

After catching up with the man, officers collected the objects discarded by the accused, finding a sachet of brown powder, and around 14 empty sachets containing only traces of a substance.

A court expert testified that 0.28 grams of heroin was found in the sachet of brown powder, at a purity of 22%.

Representatives from Sedqa told the court that the man had been seeking help for drug addiction. He had spent some weeks in their care and had not tested positive for any drugs during that period.

The court was also told that Zammit had first sought assistance from the Detox Centre in 2005 and had been trying to overcome his addiction since 2007.

As he had not been assisted by a lawyer during questioning, the court examined the criteria used to establish whether the absence of a lawyer during questioning breached the man’s rights to a fair trial.

These 10 criteria, adopted by Malta’s courts after the ECHR Grand Chamber judgment in Beuze vs Belgium, are the result of evolving local case law, which for years, oscillated between finding an automatic breach and one subject to criteria, observed the court. Lack of legal assistance by itself does not automatically cause a breach, but a number of criteria established the current legal position.

Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras, in her sentence on the matter, explained that the prosecution was not resting its case entirely on the statements, but had other, additional, evidence. The magistrate said that she was not using the Beuze judgment from a Human Rights perspective, as this was not the competence of her court, but as a measure of the probatory value that should be given to such statements.

The court said that there was insufficient evidence to prove that the man was selling drugs. Taking this into consideration together with the small amount of drugs found, the court convicted him of simple possession, fining him a total of €277.

Inspector Jurgen Vella prosecuted. 

Lawyer Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia was defence counsel.