On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the
historical visit of Pope John XXIII to Rome's Regina Coeli prisons, we, the Maltese public, gathered today, December 18th, 1998, DECLARE that:
THE
HIGH AND LOW
ARE NOT EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW
PREAMBLE
IN A TIME WHEN in our country we feel a crisis of all authority we expect, above all, that the Courts of Justice continue to inspire in us a sense of confidence and security. We frequently here of the urgent need to reform our judiciary system; and we are preoccupied by the large number of pending cases, some of which have been procrastinating for many years. We feel confident to declare our trust in the professional honesty of the judiciary, though we also feel that the present setup of the judiciary system is prejudicial to entire sectors of our people mostly due to financial and logistic reasons.
EQUALITY AND JUSTICE
It cannot be doubted that formally every Maltese
citizen enjoys the same rights before the law, be it Maltese,
European
or international. In practice,
however,
this may be somewhat different. If it is desired that justice is
to be done equal opportunities before the law can not ignore
the unequal resources and
capabilities
of people. It is universally acknowledged, in fact, that justice
is not giving the same to all but rather giving to all according
to one's own needs. It
is self-evident that, if this is not done, injustice arises.
FINANCIAL DIFFERENCES
The most clear source of inequality amongst
people concerns their financial resources. Both a prosecution
and a defense before
the Courts involve
heavy, sometimes considerable
high, financing. This includes expenses incurred by lawyers and also
other indirect expenses related to a person's employment. In our country we are particularly conscious of the fact that a law-suit is won or lost according to the expertise and commitment of one's
lawyer. In reality these latter factors depend very much on how much
a client is able to pay. It follows, than, that if a client does
not have the luxury
of adequate financial resources s/he shall have a narrower chance
to her/his due
share of justice.
This is the more relevant when a person needs a high Court to
address her/his case. We refer here to the Constitutional Court,
the European
Court, some Special Court or Tribunal, or even the Ecclesiastical
Courts.
We feel, than, that in the larger number of cases the low citizen
is greatly disadvantaged before the law and, consequently, is in
an unequal
position before the administration of justice. We understand that
there must be created some kind of system and some sort of financial
aid
for disadvantaged people who need to defend their rights, especially
in cases where human rights are involved.
DIFFERENCES IN ESTIMATION
In some cases the estimation of a person can create amongst us
some inequality. Before the law there may be a different standing
of a
person, both if s/he is well known in the public sphere, and
if s/he (or her/his
family) is notorious. Occasions when a person involved in a judicial
case is politically exploited, not without some prejudice to
the administration of justice, are not rare in our country. In
the
near past this had
also been done by the Catholic press. Furthermore, the prejudice
of justice also arises whenever a sub iudice case is totally
sabotaged by a political party, generally with the aim (in such
cases) to advantage
the high citizen to the detriment of the low.
Neither are those cases rare when a familiar,
educational, psychological, social or criminal record of a person
places these citizens in
a disadvantageous position
before the law. The most these may expect from our system is
to avail themselves from the services of a so-called "lawyer of the poor" for
their defense. Most of the times such people appear before
separate Courts which do not
have any
kind of coordination between them. This results in anomalies
such as when, for example, these people end up being awarded
different sentences
for the
same violation
of a probation or pledge order. We feel that, until the Courts
do not set up a structure of effective coordination between
them, all the
cases of such
persons
should appear before one single Court.
In this context we must not fail to mention the growing number
of cases involving foreigners, especially from the Arab world,
appearing
before
our Courts. The manner in which these people are being given
the possibility to defend themselves is not altogether orthodox.
We
praise the current
practice of providing such people with interpreters throughout
Court sittings, but we must state our dissatisfaction with the
lack of
professionality offered to them in their defense. We feel that
the situation must be
studied thoroughly and remedied adequately.
PUBLIC SLANDER
Journalistic ethics in our country also makes its differences
when dealing with persons appearing before the Courts. Images
in newspapers,
sometimes with great prominence, or on television of the faces
of people who are still considered legally innocent until found
guilty
is common
practice. The same stands for the indiscriminate broadcasting
of the names of persons before their sentence is awarded. Only
in
such cases
when the Court orders (in our opinion arbitrarily) not to do
so that such things are not done.
Such matters frequently result in serious prejudice
done to the reputation of a person and, as such, constitute an
injustice.
It is not infrequent
that a person,
after being thus slandered throughout the land, is found by
the Courts to be innocent. We feel that, for the sake of justice,
both a person's name as well as the image of her/his face should never be broadcasted before, at least, the Court's
final sentence.
CONCLUSION
What we mentioned above are but some more evident examples
which indicate that, for varied reasons and circumstances, THE
HIGH AND LOW ARE NOT EQUAL BEFORE THE LAW.
Only one of these, in fact, would have been enough to show
our regret and disappointment in regard to the Maltese judicial
system.
If our
Courts must have the respect they deserve we do not see why
the legislators of our country should not find proper solutions
to
the judicial inequalities
which exist amongst us.
