Right to fair trial

The comment made by former chief justice Noel Arrigo yesterday that he feels his fundamental right to a fair hearing has been prejudiced indicates that his lawyers may be looking into the possibility of pursuing this line of argument before a potential trial takes place.

Dr Arrigo said he was sad and concerned that he had been prejudged and that his position had been prejudiced before he had even been questioned by the police. He said this should never take place and that he would continue to maintain his position on this point.

Dr Arrigo was presumably referring to comments made by Prime Minister Eddie Fenech Adami at a press conference on August 1 in which he said that Dr Arrigo and Mr Justice Patrick Vella were being investigated on allegations of corruption in connection with the appeal of Mario Camilleri on July 5.

However, Dr Fenech Adami, among other things, added: "It resulted that money was paid to the two judges."

When asked the next day whether the prime minister had prejudiced the case with such a statement, Attorney General Anthony Borg Barthet said: "You should refer your question to the prime minister. Because of the independence enjoyed by the judiciary, it would be incumbent on the government to explain to the public that any investigation being carried out with regard to any judge is not vexatious or otherwise badly motivated."

A case involving a French home affairs minister accused of prejudicing a defendant's right to a fair trial was brought before the European Court of Human Rights in Ribemont v France in 1995.

The original case concerned the murder of a French MP in 1976. At a press conference, the French Minister, Michel Poniatowski, said that Mr Ribemont, among others was an "instigator" of the murder.

The ECHR held for the first time that the presumption of innocence could be infringed not only by a judge or court, but also by other authorities.

It also said that although the authorities had every right to inform the public about criminal investigations in progress, they should do so with all the discretion and circumspection necessary if the presumption of innocence is to be respected.

Turning to the facts of the case, the ECHR held that the statements made by the French minister were "incompatible with the presumption of innocence".

"This was clearly a declaration of the applicant's guilt which, firstly, encouraged the public to believe him guilty and, secondly, prejudged the assessment of the facts by the competent judicial authority. There has therefore been a breach of Article 6..."

Moreover, the ECHR said, although the high profile nature of the French case gave the authorities good reason to inform the public speedily, "they also made it predictable that the media would give extensive coverage to the statements about the inquiry under way. The lack of restraint and discretion vis-à-vis the applicant was therefore all the more reprehensible."

Coincidentally, the Maltese representative on the ECHR, former chief justice Giuseppe Mifsud Bonnici, sat on the case and even gave the only dissenting judgment.

In fact, Prof. Mifsud Bonnici published an essay on the presumption of innocence in the Mediterranean Journal of Human Rights in 1997.