Last year, a magistrate excoriated the “shameful and embarrassing” state the so-called court strong room was in.
She described the place where court exhibits are kept as being in “absolute abandonment”.
This outburst followed claims in a high-profile case that an exhibit had been misplaced. It was not the first case of court exhibits going missing.
The problem has become worse, growing exponentially over the years, because the court administration is in tatters.
One would have thought that things would improve when the Court Services Agency came into being in 2019. “The setting up of the Court Services Agency is another step forward in past and future reforms to strengthen the rule of law,” the justice ministry had said at the time.
One would be justified in suspecting the government has no, and, indeed, never had the intention of making this agency work because it does not genuinely want the rule of law to improve. That is not an assertion but a value judgment based on hard facts that have been surfacing.
Judges and magistrates have long been begging to be given the tools they need to be able to serve society as they should. Only last November, the Association of Maltese Judiciary warned that the system is on “the brink of collapse”.
Still, the “persistent failures” the judiciary spoke about remain as the latest case of a laptop seized from a former parish priest facing fraud charges proves yet again.
When a court expert wanted to fetch the computer, which had been exhibited in court by the prosecution eight months ago, he was informed by the exhibits officer that it could not be found.
The matter is now before the constitutional court as the defence lawyers argue that such shortcomings mean their client cannot be assured of a fair trial.
It may well result the laptop was ‘misplaced’ not ‘lost’, as has happened before. But that, in itself, already indicates an inadequate registration and tracking system in place.
Just like any other evidence, exhibits can, of course, prove crucial in a court case, whether to determine guilt or secure an acquittal. The magistrate who lambasted the manner in which the court strong room is managed rightly noted that the state in which evidence is preserved can make or break a case. She called on the justice ministry to immediately take the necessary steps to address the problem.
It is, indeed, in everybody’s interest that the matter is remedied soonest. But, perhaps the biggest burden to ensure that this sorry state of affairs in the justice system is rectified and works flawlessly as much as is humanly possible falls squarely on the judiciary itself, mainly the chief justice.
The handling and preservation of evidence are, no doubt, governed by statutes, regulations and case law. If such legal standards are not observed, the admissibility of evidence can be challenged and the credibility of court proceedings undermined.
The judiciary should, therefore, simply refuse to be put in potentially embarrassing situations resulting from the incompetence or indifference of others, including the Court Services Agency.
It is the court’s duty to ensure cases before it run the way they should and those who fail must be held in contempt of court… whoever they are.
Furthermore, the chief justice must exercise all the powers granted to him by law and bring pressure to bear on the court administration to put its house in order.
The corpus delicti must be evident to all by now.