There is an uncomfortable lesson in the Yorgen Fenech verdict: the rule of law matters most when it produces an outcome we find difficult to accept.
Fenech has been acquitted. The jury has spoken, and its verdict must be respected. That is not the end of the discussion, however. The more important questions concern not the legitimacy of the verdict, but the process that brought us to it.
Why was the evidence presented as it was? Were the investigative institutions sufficiently competent and independent? Were there failures in gathering, preserving or presenting evidence? And did the State do everything reasonably within its power to establish who commissioned the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia?
These are not questions about whether the jury was right.
They are questions about whether the State did its job properly.
And that distinction seems to have been lost in much of the reaction to the verdict.
Matthew Caruana Galizia has described the justice system as “collapsing bit by bit”, raising concerns about evidence presented to the jury and about the alleged poisoning of attitudes towards his mother, including among jurors. Those are deeply serious concerns, but they remain claims and allegations which must be distinguished from findings made by a court.
There is, meanwhile, the extraordinary development of jurors themselves being investigated by the police following allegations concerning social media posts and, in one case, access to a phone while sequestered. No charges have been filed at this stage.
That should concern us — not because it provides an excuse to explain away a verdict we dislike, but because the integrity of a jury trial depends upon the integrity of the process surrounding it.
This is where the State has an obligation that goes beyond obtaining convictions.
A State which claims the power to investigate, prosecute, imprison and, ultimately, deprive people of their liberty has an obligation to ensure that the institutions exercising that power are competent, independent and properly equipped.
That is not a left-wing principle or a right-wing principle.
It is a liberal democratic one.
And perhaps this is where Malta needs to be particularly careful.
We cannot simultaneously demand that courts be independent and then condemn them when they produce a verdict with which we disagree. We cannot insist upon the presumption of innocence and then decide that an acquittal is somehow illegitimate because public opinion has already reached its own conclusion.
But neither can we hide behind the sanctity of a verdict to avoid examining everything that led to it.
The jury answered one question.
The State still has to answer several others.
And nine years after Daphne was murdered, those questions are not going away.
Sources
- Times of Malta — reporting on Matthew Caruana Galizia’s comments on the verdict and the justice system.
- Newsbook — reporting on the police investigation into jurors.