Jail term reduced

A four-month jail term for a bus driver convicted of beating up a ticket inspector was reduced to three months on a technicality yesterday.

Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano found that Joseph Zahra had been wrongly convicted of assaulting a person "lawfully charged with a public duty when in the execution of the law or of a lawful order issued by a competent authority".

He ruled that ticketing inspector Alistair Bianco could not be said to have been executing the law or a lawful order just because he was checking bus tickets, although he was carrying out a public duty.