A missed opportunity
There was public outrage last week when a court found two architects responsible for causing the death of Miriam Pace but only sentenced them to community service.
In his judgment, Magistrate Joe Mifsud acknowledged that the March 2020 incident had angered not only the victim’s family but also the general public, but insisted that jailing the two periti would be of benefit to no one.
He said he believed in the concept of reparative justice, and that by handing down a community sentence, the accused would give something back to society. If he sent them to prison, there was a chance that two people who had a clean police record would turn into bad people, as prison time tends to do.
He also noted that he had the power to take away their warrant – a minimum one year suspended sentence would have automatically led to the revocation of the warrants – but chose not to do so, on the basis of the same argument.
Now the case is not closed, and the architects could still end up losing their warrants in a disciplinary process being carried out by the Kamra tal-Periti. It is also true that two other people – the contractor and a worker who were also involved in the project – are yet to stand trial, and they could face far more serious consequences if found guilty, even though that process might take many years to conclude.
But many felt that the court lost a golden opportunity to make an example here – to show that negligence of this kind will not be tolerated. After all, a mother lost her life here. This was not simply a case of a building collapse that left no victims. No, a family was destroyed, and the people responsible were identified, tried and convicted. So people are justified in feeling anger at the fact that two of the person behind the tragedy got off with just a slap on the wrist.
Let us imagine a different scenario. Imagine a doctor who, through negligence causes the death of a patient. Should that doctor keep his warrant? Should the courts not take it away if it is in their power to do so?
Over the past few months we have seen a number of individuals, particularly in the legal and accounting sectors, lose their warrants as a result of wrongdoing. While the Ħamrun case was certainly unintentional, at the end of the day laws were ignored and a woman died for it.
The simple truth is that the construction industry remains largely unregulated. Progress made in this regard has been slow and the outcome leaves much to be desired. While many contractors and professionals working in this field play by the rules, there are many cowboys out there. These people are reassured by the fact that enforcement is lacking and the threat of serious punishment is very low. If things remain the same at court and enforcement level, they will remain the same on the ground too, and more tragedies could be in the making.
While it would be unfair to place all responsibility for this case on the court, we feel that, while jail time could have been spared, the warrants should have been taken away. This should always be the case when a person dies as a result of negligence. There should be no second chances at playing with people’s lives.