Courts’ standard method of storing confiscated drugs faces a legal challenge from lawyers arguing that holding them inside the law courts building runs contrary to a 20-year-old legal notice. 

Lawyers representing Emanuel Calleja are arguing that a 2002 legal notice requires the court registrar to entrust confiscated drugs with the director of health, rather than the court building.

They have now moved to expunge all drugs confiscated in Calleja’s case from case records and are asking the court to also disregard court experts’ analysis of those substances, which they say were incorrectly stored.

Legal notice 121 of 2002 lists various authorities that are designated as custodians of various forms of evidence confiscated during court cases.

It states that dangerous drugs should be held by the director of health. Weapons and ammunition are the responsibility of the police commissioner, explosives and dangerous chemicals are to be held by the brigadier of the armed forces, money and gemstones are the responsibility of the Central Bank governor and items of historical or artistic value are designated as being the responsibility of the director of museums.

"Property held by such persons shall be held in a safe place by the persons designated and shall not be used by any person or released to any person except as directed by the registrar of the criminal courts," the legal notice states.

Calleja’s lawyers, Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri, say that in practice, drugs in such cases are held at the law courts building. Citing the 2002 legal notice, they say this is a “serious procedural defect” which means the confiscated substances should be expunged from case records.

Magistrate Elaine Mercieca must now rule on that request. Should it be upheld, the case could leave ripples throughout Malta’s justice system, impacting many other such cases.

Calleja was arrested in 2015 at a Paceville club where he worked as a bouncer. He was allegedly caught with hundreds of ecstasy pills as well as cocaine, and arraigned on various charges, ranging from conspiring to traffic drugs to resisting arrest and working without a licence. He is pleading not guilty to charges.