Attorney General's appeal rejected

An appeal court yesterday dismissed an appeal filed by the Attorney General over what he termed a lack of special and extraordinary reasons to warrant a punishment below the minimum prescribed by law.

The appeal was filed after the Magistrates' Court jailed Charles Zammit for a year for burgling Hal-Ferh holiday complex on August 27, 1995 and Mary Fogerty's apartment in Mensija Street, St Julian's before that.

He was also found guilty of forging Fogerty's cheques, defrauding her out of over Lm1,000 and causing damage at her apartment.

Zammit, who pleaded guilty, also admitted breaching the conditions of a previous release and committing perjury.

The Attorney General claimed the Magistrates' Court had gone below the minimum punishment prescribed by law without there being special and extraordinary reasons to warrant the application of Section 21 of the Criminal Code.

But Mr Justice Vincent DeGaetano ruled he had seen reasons which could qualify as special and extraordinary, not least the cocaine addiction and psychiatric problem of the accused and the progress he had made while in jail and elsewhere.

The judge remarked that each case had to be decided on its own merits but once he had noted evidence of the special and extraordinary reasons he did not feel he should disturb the first court's discretion.

The Attorney General had also pleaded that the first court had not taken into consideration the breach of the conditions of the previous release. However, the judge found evidence that the matter had been taken into consideration before the computation of the punishment.