The government is considering speeding up criminal proceedings by removing the requirement of a long-winded compilation of evidence stage for certain major cases, Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis said on Friday. 

Malta emulated the British legal system in having the compilation of evidence stage prior to a criminal trial, but the British removed this requirement to speed up the process while Malta retained it. 

Replying to questions by Times of Malta, Zammit Lewis said the elimination of this stage was being considered for certain cases and the case could go straight to trial. 

He said this was one of the options being studied at the moment, through consultation with various stakeholders. 

Justice Minister Edward Zammit Lewis. Photo: DOI

The compilation of evidence is a stage whereby the police presents all its evidence before a magistrate. If the case carries a punishment which goes beyond the remit of the Magistrates' Court, the case will go before a judge where all the people who testified in the compilation of evidence will be brought back to court to testify again. 

Zammit Lewis was speaking during a visit to new offices for the Law Commissioner, Judge Antonio Mizzi. He said this office has seen its budget tripling for 2021, to provide for the employment of full-time lawyers to join the team that looks into the consolidation of laws, abolishing those that had been made redundant and streamlining laws as much as possible. 

Speeding up magisterial inquiries

The government, he said, was working on amendments to speed up magisterial inquiries and criminal proceedings as well as reduce the backlog in the Appeal’s Court, which is presided over by three judges which had one of the longest list of pending cases. 

He said magisterial inquiries had to be concluded faster. While it was true that magistrates needed an administrative setup to facilitate this process, there were also magistrates who took too long to conclude their inquiries. 

He also acknowledged that the pool of court experts was far too limited and some of them were lumped with too much to do. 

“We need to address these problems with a sniper approach. We are working to provide the administrative setup, but we need certain magistrates to be more efficient,” he said. 

The First Hall of the Civil Court recently heard of an anomaly in the law in a case filed by former OPM chief of staff Keith Schembri, whereby a person accused of a crime is allowed to appeal an investigation order but a suspect does not have this right. 

Asked about this, Mr Justice Mizzi confirmed that his office was looking into this anomaly and was working on a report to address it. 

The office of the Law Commission was introduced through a law enacted in February 1980. Before that, the last time laws were consolidated was in 1942 and then again in 1984. He said work was expected to increase so the office required fill-time lawyers to analyse the laws.