Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/195525
20 Opinion maltatoday, SUNDAY, 20 OCTOBER 2013 Mr Justice and Dr Hyde Raphael Vassallo H e's done it again, folks. The same magistrate who last year ruled that crimes committed in Mellieha should be subject to different interpretations of the law – on the basis that people from Mellieha are culturally more retarded than inhabitants of other towns and villages, and therefore cannot possibly be expected to understand such complex things as 'law' and 'order' – evidently felt his last judgment just wasn't insane enough to compete for an Oscar in the 'most bizarre ruling by a magistrate in a supporting role' category. So Magistrate Carol Peralta has now single-handedly raised the bar on dotty sentences delivered by a Maltese court of law: declaring that 'foreigners' who commit petty crimes in this country will no longer be treated leniently, just because they are foreigners. They can now expect to go directly to jail, without passing Go and without collecting 200 dollars. Oh, very good. So a magistrate in the criminal court has just casually informed us all that it has hitherto been customary for foreigners charged with criminal offences to be treated more leniently than Maltese citizens… just because of their nationality. In case you don't believe me: here it is, straight from the honourable magistrate's mouth: "as from today, foreigners coming over to Malta and engaging in petty or serious crimes will be dealt with seriously, especially in the light of the fact that a great portion of those arraigned on theft are foreigners". Magistrate Peralta significantly added that a petty crime becomes serious when the person or persons responsible for such acts "are individuals in a hospitable country". Pardon my French, but… Quoi? Qu'est-ce que c'est? And… Voulezvous coucher chez Frankuni? You see, dimwits like myself have all along been under the impression that the real difference between a 'petty' and a 'serious' crime is that… um… the former is 'petty' in nature, while the latter is 'serious'. I mean, the two words do have meanings, you know… and these meanings do not change depending on whether the crimes they describe were committed by people with red, blue or green passports (or, for that matter, with no passports at all). Well, evidently I was mistaken. It seems that, in the Maltese jurisdiction, all it takes for a 'petty' crime to become 'serious' is for it to have been committed by a 'guest' in a host country. How interesting. Let's take this original thought process one step further, shall we? By the same stretch of the imagination, a 'serious' crime should become 'petty' when it is Maltese justice, as seen by a Maltese citizen committed by the host against the guest. And oh look: that is precisely how Maltese justice works and has always worked… and not only have we never tried to disguise the blatant injustice, but we now have it inscribed in a court ruling for all posterity to marvel at. From this vantage point, Peralta's logic suddenly no longer looks quite as extra-terrestrial as it did only a few seconds ago. I hate to say it, but… he's actually right, you know. It is demonstrably true, as Peralta so baldly declared in court last Thursday, that there are two codes of law currently operating in the Maltese legal landscape: one for locals, and another for that vast, shapeless swarm of insect life we so often refer to as 'third country nationals'. Onto some examples now: starting with the teenie, weenie little detail that foreigners charged with criminal offences in this country are routinely denied bail because 'they might abscond'… while bail is routinely granted by the courts to even the most hardboiled criminals charged with the most heinous crimes imaginable… so long as they are Maltese. Peralta may be unaware of this fact – though I doubt it, seeing as he dishes out sentences in the criminal court himself – but foreigners account for almost two-thirds of the entire prison population, and most of them were never sentenced to prison at all. They are actually awaiting the commencement of their trial, having been denied bail on the basis that they are foreign. But cases in which bail is denied to a Maltese suspect? Few and far between… so rare, in fact, that when it does happen it generally warrants a newspaper headline. Meanwhile here's a practical example to chew over. The same court that initially denied bail to Daniel Holmes (a Welshman caught cultivating modest amounts of cannabis in his Gozo flat), and kept him in preventive custody for five years before sentencing him to 11 years and a €23,000 fine, saw no contradiction whatsoever in granting bail to a certain Dione Mercieca: a former Eddie Fenech Adami henchman who confessed to murdering his business partner by shooting him at point blank range in 2008. And while some foreigners have had their passports confiscated to ensure they do not leave the country even if granted bail (I know of one such case right now)… Mercieca was not merely granted bail, but even allowed to travel on business trips without even the remotest concern that he might abscond. Then there are all those cases in which Maltese and foreigners are charged with the same crime, and not only is bail granted to the local but denied the foreigner… but the two cases are heard in different courts, so that one suspect (no prizes for guessing which) gets a trial by jury, complete with a possible maximum sentence of 25 years, while the other goes to the magistrates' court where he gets to face 10 years at the very most. But all this is admittedly irrelevant at this stage. Peralta has decided that foreigners were getting let off lightly for years, and hey! He's a magistrate, while you and I are just little nobodies who must perforce bow to the superior wisdom of the judiciary. All the same: we are left with two – possibly more – conundrums that just can't be hammered into any logical sense, no matter how you choose the look at the case at hand. One: Peralta first bemoans the leniency of the courts visa-vis petty crime committed by foreigners… and almost immediately proceeds to issue a It seems that, in the Maltese jurisdiction, all it takes for a 'petty' crime to become 'serious' is for it to have been committed by a 'guest' in a host country SUSPENDED SENTENCE to a foreigner charged in his own court with a petty crime. Go figure… But to be honest it's the second anomaly that has (rightly) captured the popular imagination. The implications of Peralta's ruling are that the blatant, naked and undisguised double standards our justice system so often applies between foreigners and locals is not the result of an oversight… a glitch in the system... a mistake which we all know to be wrong, but with which we have been saddled.