Court of Appeal rules ‘it is correct to impose harsher sentences on repeat offenders’

The Court of Appeal yesterday confirmed a jail sentence handed down to two unrepentant thieves, saying that it is correct to impose harsher sentences on repeat offenders.

Italian bartender Gianluca Calo’ and French hairdresser Elodie Didier Christine Moriceau had each been jailed for four years after they were found guilty of theft, fraud and relapsing.

The couple had been accused of committing no less than 11 instances of aggravated theft and fraud since late March 2017. They had struck at the Corinthia, Radisson and Le Meridien hotels in St Julian’s between 25 March and 28 May 2017, as well as stealing a mobile phone and cash from a car in Sliema.

Their criminal exploits had become so notorious that one local hotel had put up photos of the couple at reception with instructions to stop them if spotted, a Magistrate’s Court had been told.

The pair had filed an appeal against what they perceived as the harshness of the sentence, arguing they had received a lesser punishment for similar offences, just days before.

The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided by Madam Justice Edwina Grima however, disagreed with the argument.

“This Court has examined all the circumstances revolving around this case. Both were accused of having committed a long string of thefts in a matter of a few days and having being already found guilty of a similar offence a few months previously. It is clear that appellants are serial, habitual and persistent robbers, having come to Malta for the sole purpose of living off the proceeds of their crimes. It is therefore incumbent on these courts, faced with such a situation, to prevent, in its judgments, the commission of further offences, the rehabilitation of the offenders evidently not leading to safeguarding society from such delinquents.

“Now appellants are being charged with a string of seven thefts besides other offences, having already been found guilty by another court of another string of 18 robberies and this in a matter of a few days as evidenced from their criminal conduct sheet. Consequently, this Court is of the opinion that the punishment tendered by the First Court was well within the parameters of the law considering that appellants are unrepentant and persistent offenders, guilty of committing a repetition of offences similar in nature, to the detriment of society. If, by committing a criminal act, the offender signals that he values the act more than the cost that it imposes on society, then he should face a higher sanction if he chooses to commit the same act again and again!”

It was the court’s duty to protect society from such offenders by handing down a punishment that would deter others from emulating them, it said.

Inspector Trevor Micallef prosecuted.