A man convicted of breaching trapping laws has had his punishment revoked on appeal on account of a discrepancy between the name of the person accused and that of the person convicted.

Charles Mifsud had landed a €2,000 fine and a permanent ban on his hunting licence in 2017 after being declared guilty of breaching the conditions of his licence by failing to dismantle his nets at the time of day when trapping was prohibited and also making use of more than two nets.

He was also found guilty of relapsing.

When the case went to the appeal stage, his lawyers argued that there had been a wrong assessment of evidence and the punishment was excessive.

In the course of the appeal, they pointed out a discrepancy in the first judgment stemming from the fact that the accused was stated as ‘Charles Mifsud’ whereas the person convicted was ‘Charles Muscat.’ Such a discrepancy affected the validity of the judgment, the defence argued.

The prosecution, while acknowledging the discrepancy in the surname, argued that the rest of the particulars matched.

The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by Mr Justice Aaron Bugeja, observed that no request for a correction had been made by either of the parties as they had every right to do up to the stage that the proceedings were put off for final judgment.

In this case, the judgment had been issued in the name of a person different to that of the accused.

The courts were duty-bound to ensure that the details, especially on the signed official copies of the judgments, were correct, the judge declared. The resulting error was no fault of the appellant, and the “very particular circumstances of this case” warranted revocation of the conviction since the party convicted by the Magistrates’ Court was Charles Muscat and not the appellant Charles Mifsud.

Lawyers Franco Debono and Amadeus Cachia appeared for the appellant.