The Chief Justice will soon be able to assign four magistrates to focus entirely on magisterial inquiries following a call for five new magistrates to be issued soon, Justice Minister Jonathan Attard announced on Friday.
Addressing a news conference, he said the call will be for five magistrates, with one replacing one who is being promoted to judge.
On Wednesday, the government announced three judges who had been selected following a call for applications. Magistrate Natasha Galea Sciberras and lawyers Henri Mizzi and Mark Simiana will soon take their oath of office.
The new judges will allow the Chief Justice to assign one additional judge to preside over the commercial court, Attard said.
The drive to introduce magistrates focusing solely on inquiries has long been promised, and comes after evidence of the legal system heaving under the burden of unfinished magisterial inquiries.
Attard said there were 1,723 pending magisterial inquiries, some of them dating back 40 years.
He said the authorities cannot continue being indifferent to the hardship pending inquiries cause on victims and their relatives so it will be implementing its electoral pledge to have a team of magistrates focused on inquiries.
The proposal to have magistrates focused solely was first made 15 years ago in parliament by then-MP Franco Debono. In a 2008 speech, Debono had argued that it was unfair for magistrates to be expected to carry out dual roles, as investigators and adjudicators, and called for a class of magistrates to be solely focused on carrying out inquiries.
Court experts to be made accountable
The second phase of the reform will see legislative proposals to make court experts accountable. “Court experts must stick to the timeframes they are given, not finish their assignment when they deem fit,” Attard said, hinting that reports by court experts was delaying the conclusion of magisterial inquiries.
The government spent some €17 million on court experts in the last two years, he said.
He said there had been an unprecedented increase in human resources employed by the Court Services Agency in recent years, increasing the total staff compliment to almost 500.
At the same time it was addressing court infrastructure with the upgrade of the family court, the creation of a new hall for trials and a planned upgrade on a building behind the law courts which will have an additional four courtrooms.
Regarding the consultation process to limit compilations of evidence to one year for their conclusion, Attard said the feedback received was currently being analysed and legislative reforms will follow.
On the commercial court, Attard said the plan was for this to have a dedicated building with locations outside Valletta also being considered.
Asked by Times of Malta about the Gozo Court, which is small, inaccessible and totally inadequate, Attard said the government had received proposals from people who were ready to sell their property to be used for a new Gozo court but this process had not yet been concluded.
In reply to another question by Times of Malta on the 2,000 pending domestic violence cases and whether more magistrates than the current two need to be assigned to hasten the process, Attard said that nothing was stopping the Chief Justice from assigning more magistrates to hear these sensitive cases.
“If more resources are needed, we will consider it,” he said, adding that sitting of domestic violence cases has tripled since an additional magistrate was assigned to these cases.
Asked about the issue where a group of 105 newly-graduated lawyers were still waiting for their warrants a year after graduation, Attard said it was “unacceptable” and did not know what to say to these lawyers apart from assure them that he is chasing the Committee for Lawyers and Legal Procurators which is stalling the process.
In reply to a question about the new Chamber of Advocates president also having a role in the Nationalist Party, Attard said this was “worrying” and “concerning” and he would bring this up in his first meeting with the new chamber committee.