A man will be spending the rest of his life in prison after jurors yesterday found him guilty of the murder of an elderly couple at their Santa Lucija home seven years ago.
Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono jailed 37-year-old Brian Vella for life after noting that this had been a serious crime in which an elderly couple had been killed in "a most cruel and brutal manner".
After seven hours of deliberation, jurors returned a 6-3 guilty verdict finding Mr Vella guilty of the murder of his neighbours, 79-year-old Gerald Grima and his 63-year-old wife who were gagged and bound in their apartment on February 10, 2000.
They also found him guilty of stealing between Lm100 and Lm1,000, the theft being qualified by homicide, by a 7-2 vote and unanimously found him guilty of breaching the conditions of a previous release and relapsing.
The decomposed bodies of the Grima couples had been found in their home on February 17, 2000. A post mortem revealed that they died as a result of asphyxia due to gagging and that Mr Grima's cause of death also included intracranial haemorrhage.
After the verdict was registered, lawyer Anglu Farrugia, who represented Mr Vella with lawyer Kris Busietta, noted that the 6-3 verdict reached by jurors was the minimum verdict allowed by law. He also noted that this was the third trial after two previous trials had been dissolved.
(Mr Vella's first trial on the case was dissolved on February 4, 2004, after the evidence of a co-accused, Dominic Bonnici, was deemed inadmissible at that stage. The trial was dissolved a second time on January 11, 2006 when the Police Commissioner's evidence was deemed prejudicial by the court.)
Dr Farrugia argued that his client had suffered a prejudice on procedural grounds due to an amendment that came into force after his first trial was dissolved. The amendment stipulated that the testimony of an accomplice - in this case Mr Bonnici - need not be corroborated by circumstantial evidence.
(Mr Bonnici was jailed for 30 years after he admitted to his involvement in the double murder. In his testimony at Mr Vella's trial on Tuesday, he told jurors how he and Mr Vella had barged into the Grimas' apartment, bound and gagged them and ransacked their apartment. The items they stole eventually yielded them Lm200.)
Dr Farrugia called on the court not to jail his client for life given the minimum verdict reached.
The head of the prosecution team at the Attorney General's Office, Anthony Barbara, submitted that a clear message was to be given to society that such condemnable crimes should not be tolerated.
He reminded the court that this was a case of an indefensible elderly couple who went home, after attending the feast of St Paul, only to be killed in their own apartment. The Grimas had suffered martyrdom as they died a slow death and Mr Vella did not show any mercy towards them.
Dr Barbara said this was an extremely selfish and cruel murder carried out for money. The 7-2 verdict showed that jurors were convinced there had been a homicide during the theft.
The law laid down that murder was punishable with life imprisonment and here there were two murders together with the charge of relapsing. So, if conceivable, Mr Vella should be given a punishment of more than life imprisonment. Mr Bonnici had been jailed for 30 years because he pleaded guilty, Dr Barbara noted.
After hearing the submissions, Mr Justice Galea Debono delivered judgment as Mr Vella stood in the dock with seven police officers behind him.
The judge noted that, despite the amendment on the admissibility of the testimony of an accomplice, the evidence of Mr Bonnici was corroborated with forensic evidence and the court had clearly directed the jurors on how much weight to give this evidence according to law.
He also noted that Mr Vella had 16 convictions on his criminal record that including assault on police officers and theft among other crimes. The judge concluded by noting that this was a serious case in which an elderly couple had been killed in a cruel and brutal manner and for this reason he jailed Mr Vella for life.