The weight of justice

For almost nine years, I have longed for this week to arrive. Now that it has, I realise something I did not expect.

I am afraid.

Not because the trial has begun but because of what it demands of all of us.

That confession may surprise people. After all these years of campaigning for justice in Daphne Caruana Galizia’s case, they might expect certainty. But certainty is the one thing the rule of law does not permit.

I have followed every development in the case, reading every page of evidence the law allowed the public to see and watching the prosecution assemble a painstaking case.

The accused enters the courtroom innocent. Not “probably guilty”. Innocent. Unless and until the prosecution proves otherwise beyond reasonable doubt. If that sounds uncomfortable, it is because justice is inherently uncomfortable. It is meant to be. That is not a favour the law extends to the accused. It is a protection the law extends to all of us.

We deliberately make conviction difficult because we know that convicting an innocent person is one of the gravest wrongs a state can commit. We therefore accept something that is difficult yet morally necessary: that it is better for guilty people to go free than for innocent people to be imprisoned.

I have not lived these past nine years as a detached observer. Few of us have. Some lost a wife, a mother, a sister and a daughter. Others lost a colleague or a friend. Many lost the comforting illusion that organised violence against journalism could never happen here. Some of us learnt that the forces Daphne challenged did not disappear with her. They merely changed tactics.

That is precisely why I cling so stubbornly to due process. If I ask the courts to abandon their principles in a case that matters deeply to me, I lose the moral right to insist on those principles in every other case.

Before this became Malta’s greatest constitutional crisis in living memory, before it became an international scandal, and before it became the defining political event of a generation, it was a murder. A woman was killed. Her husband was widowed. Her sons lost their mother. Her grandchildren lost the chance to know her as they deserved. Justice is owed to them first. But it is not owed only to them.

It is impossible for me to think about this trial without thinking about Daphne as she was before she became “the victim”.

I still picture her making her way down Republic Street to the law courts, another bundle of papers under her arm, another libel suit to defend. Those court appearances had become part of the rhythm of her life. They were meant to exhaust her, distract her, intimidate her and, ultimately, silence her. From a distance, she hardly looked capable of shaking the foundations of power. She was softly spoken, almost shy in conversation, never performing courage for an audience.

Then she would go home and sit down at her computer. The quiet woman so many passed in the street became one of the most uncompromising voices this country has known. She wrote with extraordinary moral clarity. She stripped away the respectable language behind which corruption, greed and intimidation tried to hide. She did not invent the conspiracy between politics, business and organised crime that poisoned our public life. She simply refused to pretend it was not there.

Those who wanted silence found only one way to answer her words. That is why justice in this case matters so profoundly.

Justice is inherently uncomfortable- Manuel Delia

A journalist is not murdered because criminals fear journalism. A journalist is murdered because criminals fear what free citizens might do with the truth. When organised violence succeeds in silencing public scrutiny, every citizen loses something of their freedom.

Justice in Caruana Galizia’s case belongs not only to one family but to the republic itself.

The courtroom now has one question to answer: Has the prosecution proved the charge according to law? That question is indispensable. But it is not the only one.

Outside the courtroom, other questions remain. Why has accountability for the corruption Daphne exposed proved so much more hesitant than accountability for her murder? Why, almost nine years later, did photographs of her sons entering court provoke ridicule from some quarters instead of simple human compassion? Why do we remain so eager to sort every tragedy into partisan camps instead of recognising a common loss?

And there is another question I cannot shake. Have we done everything we know how to do to make justice possible?

No justice system designed by human beings can ever be perfect. That is inevitable. But there is a profound moral difference between imperfections we discover only after they have caused harm and weaknesses we already know about yet consciously choose not to repair.

The public inquiry into Caruana Galizia’s assassination did not merely explain how the state created the conditions in which she could be murdered. It also warned us that Malta needed stronger tools to confront organised criminality capable of combining money, violence and institutional influence. It urged us to study the experience of countries, particularly Italy, that have spent decades adapting their institutions to confront mafia-type organisations.

Too many of those recommendations gather dust. That is not this court’s responsibility. Nor is it the burden now carried by the jurors. It is ours.

Justice has not been handed over entirely to the courtroom. It also depends on whether governments repair institutions when independent inquiries expose their weaknesses. It depends on whether we protect journalists while they are alive rather than celebrate them after they are dead. It depends on whether we refuse the tribal instinct that turns every criminal proceeding into another political contest.

Whatever verdict this trial delivers, one chapter of the campaign for justice is approaching its natural conclusion. Another never will.

We cannot restore to Daphne’s family what was taken from them. We cannot hear her voice again exposing the lies and evasions that others preferred to leave undisturbed. But we can decide whether the intimidation that sought to silence her will also silence us.

We still miss her.

Walking down Republic Street, Daphne never looked like a revolutionary. Yet, every time she sat down to write, she reminded us that courage is not measured by the volume of a person’s voice but by what they refuse to stop saying when silence would be safer.

She never knelt. We have no excuse to kneel now.