Angry magistrate orders ‘jury rules’ as prosecution fails to summon enough witnesses

A furious magistrate has declared that “jury rules” are to apply to the Paqpaqli case after noting that only a handful of witnesses were appearing at every sitting.

The case against the 13-member core organising committee for Paqpaqli ghall-Istrina, Paul Bailey, Tonio Darmanin, Tonio Cini, Agostino Degiorgio, Jonathan Tonna, Kevin Perry, Melvin Haber, Ian Keith Cilia Pisani, Jonathan Bruno, Julian Manara, Christopher Sultana, David Bugeja and Brian Gatt continued yesterday morning.

The 13 are accused of involuntarily causing grievous bodily harm, as well damage to various motor vehicles, through imprudence, carelessness and non-observance of regulations after 23 spectators were injured when a Porsche 918 Spyder crashed into the crowd at the annual Paqpaqli Ghall-Istrina car show in October 2015.

Presiding Magistrate Aaron Bugeja, who had allocated four hours to hear prosecution witnesses today, erupted yesterday morning after only three witnesses were summoned by the prosecution, finishing their testimony in around half an hour. Yesterday, the court had also allocated a sitting till 5pm, but the sitting was over in 30 minutes.

The prosecution explained that they had tried to summon witnesses but that some had been unable to turn up.

“Today everyone speaks of human rights, but the time has come to speak of community rights,” rued the magistrate. It was unacceptable to make Maltese witnesses waste a day of work to come to court and to bring witnesses from the UK for just 30 minutes of testimony, he said, before ordering that jury rules are to apply from yesterday onwards. This means that enough witnesses to fill the scheduled sitting must be waiting outside the hall, available to testify, as happens in jury trials. The magistrate observed that the next two sittings, which will be held towards the end of April, will last from 9am till 5pm and warned that he wanted those sittings to be fully exploited. Police Inspectors Silvio Magro, Hubert Cini and Josric Mifsud are prosecuting. Bailey is being represented by lawyers Giannella de Marco and Stephen Tonna Lowell while lawyer Joe Giglio is Tonio Darmanin’s legal counsel. The other members of the organising committee are being represented by lawyer Stefano Filletti in the court proceedings. Lawyers Roberto Montalto and Michael Grech are appearing as parte civile for the victims.