A woman who turned to Malta’s highest court to seek justice after police forced her to search through her own excrement ended up having her fundamental rights breached by that very same court.
The constitutional court hearing Jennifer Koster’s plea took almost six years to wrap up, with a court on Tuesday warning that such delays would continue to be the norm for as long as legislators did not reform “archaic” processes in Malta’s justice system.
Koster first went to court in 2015 after police officers arrested her for 18 hours, forced her to undergo a medical examination and then handed her a plastic bag and ordered her to search through her own faeces for drugs.
The search yielded nothing and police never pressed charges against her.
Koster argued that officers had subjected her to degrading and humiliating treatment and filed legal proceedings to that effect.
A court dismissed her case in late 2020, more than five-and-a-half years after she had first filed it. But an appeals court found in her favour, taking just a few months to reach a verdict.
Within weeks of that court victory, Koster filed a separate case, arguing that the years-long delay to conclude her case had in itself led to her fundamental rights being breached.
On Tuesday, the First Hall of the Civil Court in its constitutional jurisdiction ruled in her favour.
It found that while Koster herself had caused 18 months' worth of court delays, the court had taken more than 30 months to deliver a sentence after all evidence had been submitted. During that period, the case was deferred 16 separate times.
The court made it clear that the blame could not be pinned on the judge who heard that initial case: a massive backlog of cases and an overly “archaic and bureaucratic” court system made it difficult to expedite justice, it said.
It also made a recommendation to legislators, saying the discovery process in legal cases – the process by which a party in the case is given access to evidence presented by the other side – should begin before cases reach the courtroom.
That would allow lawyers from both sides to be fully informed of the evidence being presented and prevent having to postpone court hearings to give lawyers a chance to get up to speed.
“The current system is the antithesis of this, with cases uselessly delayed at the proof gathering stage and documentation presented at the last minute, despite the party knowing of it well beforehand,” the court said.
“Until legislators understand that this is the only way to make the judicial process more effective and efficient, it will continue to be a pedantic, bureaucratic and inefficient one, solely benefiting those in the wrong.”
The court, presided by judge Francesco Depasquale, ruled in Koster’s favour and ordered the state to compensate her with €3,000.
Lawyers Franco Debono and Marion Camilleri represented Koster.