A contractor jailed over the 2004 collapse of a building in St Paul’s Bay that killed two women has won €7,000 compensation after the court found that his right to be tried within a reasonable time had been breached. 

A judge found “unreasonable” and “disproportionate” the 18 years it took for Paul Demicoli’s case to be finally decided. 

Mr Justice Francesco Depasquale, however, threw out his request for the two-year effective jail term to be offset with the monetary award for the human rights breach. 

Demicoli was one of two men jailed for having caused the death of the two women through negligence when a building in Triq Ramon Perellos collapsed at around 3.30pm on June 3, 2004 as a result of excavations on an adjoining plot. 

Maria Dolores Zarb, 60, was giving a Maltese language lesson to Russian student Nadezda Vavilova when her home came crumbling down, killing them both.

The collapse led to criminal action against Demicoli as the contractor, the worker carrying out excavation works at the time, Kevin Bonnici, and the owner of the plot, Paul Magro. They were charged with involuntary homicide and inadequate risk assessment. In 2009, Demicoli and Bonnici were found guilty and sentenced to a three-year and 18-month jail term respectively. Magro was acquitted. 

In October last year, Demicoli had his three-year prison sentence reduced to two years on appeal.

In a case filed in the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction, Demicoli said he considered it “disgraceful and shameful” that his criminal case took 18 years to be decided and he was still condemned to an effective jail term.

He said that, while he understood that it was a serious incident, this did not justify a breach “in the most obvious way” of his right to be tried within a reasonable time according to the Constitution and the European Convention of Human Rights. Demicoli also said that the victim’s relatives had testified in court proceedings and had asked it not to impose effective imprisonment but the court still decided otherwise.

In a rare move last February, Mr Justice Depasquale granted an interim measure whereby he had ordered Demicoli’s release from prison until his human rights case was heard.

This decision was, however, overturned in August when the Constitutional Court upheld an appeal filed by the Attorney General, the Police Commissioner and the State Advocate. 

In his judgment, Mr Justice Depasquale observed that criminal proceedings against Demicoli had started in June 2005, more than a year after the incident, and reached the final judgment stage in October last year – more than 18 years later. 

He noted that Demicoli had filed appeals and cases challenging the law under which he had been charged – as he had all the right to do – but these had little effect on this case. The court found that Demicoli’s case was practically at a standstill for 10 of the 18 years. 

“The court understands that a judge can have great work pressure, dictated both by the large volume of cases and also the complex nature of the cases that one might have. A court needs adequate time to properly sift and judge the case before pronouncing itself. 

“However, it is certainly not appropriate to have such a passage of time where a case is virtually at a standstill for so long, awaiting a final decision. This has always been considered by the European Court of Human Rights as a delay that breaches the rights of those who are waiting for the outcome of the case,” Mr Justice Depasquale ruled.

While finding that there had been unreasonable delays in the criminal case, the same could not be said for the appeals stage where the case was heard and decided expeditiously, in just 18 months. 

Mr Justice Depasquale noted that Zarb’s daughter, Marie Diane Mulè Stagno, had declared she had forgiven Demicoli and Bonnici in “a decision based on choice, will and faith” and that she would have preferred them to be given community work rather than imprisonment. 

However, it could not uphold Demicoli’s argument that his rights had been breached because the court did not follow this advice. On the contrary, he noted that the court reduced the jail term from three to two years. 

He, therefore, ordered the State Advocate to pay Demicoli €7,000 in compensation but turned down his request for this amount to be offset with the remaining time in jail that he still had to serve.