Alfred Degiorgio, one of the men who last October admitted to the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia, is seeking authorisation to produce evidence shedding light upon his physical and mental state on the day he admitted to the murder just before his trial got underway.

On that October 14 morning, Degiorgio was escorted to court in a wheelchair and under the supervision of a nurse to face trial by jury for his role as hitman alongside his brother George, in the journalist’s 2017 assassination.

But before the jurors had even been selected, he and his brother George registered an admission to planting and detonating the car bomb that killed Caruana Galizia outside her Bidnija home. Each were sentenced to a 40-year jail term.

Two weeks after their guilty plea the convicted brothers filed an application requesting that their trial be heard again.

They claimed that their last-minute admission was prompted by a lack of equality of arms arising mainly from the fact that their previous lawyer had renounced the brief merely weeks before the trial.

That meant that unlike the prosecution, who were fully prepared to handle the case, the accused were assigned legal aid lawyers who faced the arduous task of familiarising themselves with the voluminous records.

It was practically impossible for them to set up an adequate defence.

In view of the upcoming hearing of their request for a retrial, the Degiorgios have now filed another application seeking court authorisation to produce fresh evidence at appeal stage.

Alfred Degiorgio in his application said it would be opportune to produce CCTV footage from the Corradino Correctional Facility as well as from court, showing his physical and mental state on the day of the trial.

The two brothers are also requesting the testimony of doctors and nurses.

The Attorney General objected to the request, arguing that the best evidence was already preserved in the case records.

Before being escorted to face trial, Degiorgio had been checked by a prison doctor and certified as “fit to attend court,” the AG declared. 

The accused had been escorted in a wheelchair and under nurse supervision as a precautionary measure after going on a hunger strike and also swallowing some pills prior to the court hearing.

However, when both accused signalled their intention to plead guilty, the judge presiding over the trial had directed a doctor and a psychiatrist to examine Alfred Degiorgio.

Both had pronounced him fit to understand, follow and make a decision.

That was merely minutes before both brothers registered an admission and therefore, that evidence by the medical experts was, “without a shadow of doubt,” the best evidence of the applicant’s state of health at the time.

Alfred Degiorgio was doubtlessly not in the best of health that day for reasons that were “self-induced.”

The footage that were being requested by the defence at appeal stage were inferior to that evidence and could only confirm what was “obvious and uncontested,” argued Deputy AG Philip Galea Farrugia.