“Would you rather face a great white shark or a salt-water crocodile?”
That’s a question I recall asking in the 1980s, when I was a little girl and Jaws was all the rage. It’s a question I still ponder.
Fast forward 35 years, and I have not lost the urge to ask morbid hypothetical questions – only grown-up ones for grown-up times. And often they concern a justice system I frequently struggle to comprehend.
Take the deaths of Daphne Caruana Galizia and Miriam Pace. Both died violently and without warning. They were other peoples’ daughters, sisters and wives. They were also mothers, both in their early 50s, who would never live to enjoy the long-term rewards of loving and self-sacrificing parenthood. They would not follow the lives of their children into full adulthood and see them marry. Never to become grandmothers or grow old, they would be buried, against the natural order of things, by their own parents. How poignant is that?
Miriam Pace may not have been the victim of premeditated murder but her loss is still as irrevocable as Daphne Caruana Galizia’s. The latter’s assassination was, of course, a seminal moment in Malta’s history that sent shockwaves round the world. It was, to some degree, our ‘Princess Diana’ moment – a woman who courted controversy in life who became even more controversial in death.
Her death was wilful homicide, which, in legal terms, is the most serious crime in our Criminal Code. Our courts sit up and take notice, they are rigorous in the extreme, and judges feel empowered to hand down life sentences that are not easily overturned on appeal.
But when it comes to second- and third-degree murder – death by dangerous driving or death caused by the collapse of a building – the scales of justice begin to favour defendants and play down the victims. It’s a subject that exercises me greatly and one I’ve written about extensively. In fact, it’s a sore point and gets me asking those awkward hypothetical questions.
Miriam Pace’s death hit home, very hard, just like the ton of bricks that came down on her home and buried her alive. And I wasn’t alone. We were all shaken by her death. We all wanted to make sure this would never happen again. People, after all, have a fundamental right to live in their own homes without fear of being buried alive. And the complacency and incompetence that had led to that principle being so casually forgotten made my blood boil.
The dignified behaviour of Miriam’s husband and children made the situation all the more poignant. These were decent, unassuming people living their blameless private lives, and my incandescent rage increased exponentially with my profound sadness and sympathy. And that’s when I knew the answer to that hypothetical question.
Miriam Pace has been failed yet again- Michela Spiteri
“Would you rather lose a loved one to cold-blooded murder, or to a death by criminal negligence?” Yes, that’s a Scylla and Charybdis sort of question, monstrous on both sides. On our own Mediterranean island, ‘accidents’ caused by unsupervised excavation or drunken-driving happen with sickening regularity. And that’s why I am inclined to be even more appalled and sickened by the deaths they cause.
I am of course aware that those whose nearest and dearest have been victims of murder may think me arrogant or insensitive. But I do think that I have a point. The bottom line of both deaths is exactly the same, though not in legal terms. I almost feel like I have to ‘put right’ the injustices of these so-called accidental deaths and the indulgent way they are regarded, not least by our judicial system.
When Miriam Pace died, I hoped that this would be, like Daphne Caruana Galizia’s passing, another turning point for Malta. The assassination shed light on decades of institutional systemic failure, a corrupt police force and the incestuous relationship between the state, its corporate controllers and the criminal underworld. In just the same way, Miriam’s ‘accident’ highlighted a widespread culture of short-cuts in the construction industry, aided and abetted by non-enforcement.
Her death could therefore have been prevented. Yet the state had failed her. I therefore wished that our justice system would do better. Her death could not be in vain. I hoped and prayed that those culpable would not get off lightly. Justice needed to be done, and it needed to be seen to be done. I wanted shock waves to pass right through the construction industry, so that what had happened to Miriam would never happen again.
We hear of people being sent to prison for stealing mobile phones (even after the victims have been compensated and all forgiven and forgotten), of people being sent to prison for forging passports out of sheer desperation, and junkies being sent to prison for fraud and petty theft. At times like these, I resist the temptation to slam the courts because I know that the judiciary can only work within the confines and parameters of the law and that often its hands are tied. Magistrates and judges forced to mete out inappropriate punishments are also victims of the system.
But this time round, I couldn’t conceal my disgust. When I heard that the magistrate had ordered one of the architects to do 480 hours of community service and pay a €10,000 fine (the other even less!), my reaction was one of incredulous rage. Had these architects admitted to the charges at the earliest opportunity, then these sentences might just have had some point. But they registered a not-guilty plea and were therefore in no position to benefit from any discount.
And since when do magistrates care whether or not the accused have to provide for their families? Tell that to all those people who are routinely slammed with freezing orders. People guilty of far less have been jailed, some for as long as two years. There are many ways you can skin a cat and make sure that justice is served. But community service and small change are certainly not one of them.
Miriam Pace has been failed yet again.