Marsden to sue over lack of legal aid under arrest
Raphael Vassallo
Steven Louis Marsden – the 50-year-old Briton imprisoned for three years on drug trafficking charges, only to be acquitted on appeal last month – will be suing the Republic of Malta for compensation over a number of alleged human rights violations: including lack of access to legal counsel while in police custody, and degrading treatment at Corradino’s notorious Division Six. Marsden was arrested in 2006, after 50,000 capsules of a substance believed to be ecstasy were discovered in his possession. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years for conspiracy to traffic in the illegal drug, even after a chemical analysis revealed that the pills in question were not ecstasy, and – more ominous still – they were not even illegal.
Speaking to MaltaToday this week, Marsden confirmed that if necessary, he intends to take his case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.
“What I did was not a crime,” he said, reiterating his basic defence from day one. “It may not have been ethically or morally correct, but to be sentenced to 25 years for something that is not even illegal, having already spent more than three years behind bars, is clearly not on.”
Apart from the apparent miscarriage of justice, Marsden’s case against Malta is expected to also highlight a number of questionable practices regarding local arrest and detention procedures, which have remained technically unchanged since the 1970s.
“I was not allowed to speak to my lawyer before or during my interrogation by the police,” he said with reference to the all-important first 48 hours of his arrest. “And yet, I was presented with a statement and asked to sign it, despite not having a lawyer to explain the legal implications of putting my signature to that piece of paper.”
Marsden also complains that this statement was used against him as evidence, despite the fact that he had all along refused to sign it.
“The prosecution banged on about a statement they claimed I had released under interrogation. But I never signed it, because it was not what I said. The words were different, and had different implications. But though I never signed this statement, it was still produced as evidence against me in court...”
Furthermore, Marsden was not informed of his basic rights at law upon being arrested: universally acknowledged to be among the rights enjoyed by persons in police custody.
“In my three years in prison I spoke to a lot of people who also claimed that they had been pressured into signing false confessions by the police. Many of them didn’t even know they had the right to remain silent. How could they be expected to know that, if they’re not even allowed to talk to a lawyer while in custody?”
Ironically, the Nationalist Party rose to power in 1987 partly on the promise to address these and other issues, in an election campaign dominated by human rights concerns. But despite a clear commitment by then Opposition leader Eddie Fenech Adami on the eve of the 1987 election, Malta’s arrest procedures were left untouched for 17 years until 2004, when a wide-ranging reform was finally introduced.
However, the relevant legal notices have still not been published, and as a result the new laws never came into force... not even after the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights last year ruled (in the Salduz versus Turkey case) that Turkey had violated Article 6 (the right to fair trial) because the applicant was not allowed legal aid while in police custody.
Nor are the arrest procedures the only questionable aspect of Marsden’s three-year sojourn in Malta. “The conditions in Corradino’s Division Six are appalling,” he said, claiming that he was denied access to the prison library for three years, and that there were “rats running around the floor” in his cell.
“Prison in Malta is a complete joke. They call it a ‘Correctional facility’, but it’s more like a 19th century gaol. If you have the money, it’s easier to get hold of a packet of heroin than a packet of teabags.”
Malta versus Steven Marsden
Stephen John Louis Marsden was arrested at the Haywharf on 10 July 2006, on arrival by ferry from Sicily. Following a police tip-off, approximately 50,000 of pills of a substance initially suspected to be MDMA (street name: ecstasy) were found hidden in his Mitsubishi Pajero.
On 11 July 2006 Marsden was charged in Court with: (a) conspiracy to sell or deal in a drug (ecstasy) in Malta or having promoted, constituted, organised or financed the conspiracy; (b) importation of psychotropic and restricted drugs (ecstasy), and; (c) possession of the same drug without special authorisation.
The prosecution also produced as evidence a statement purportedly released by Marsden while under arrest, but which Marsden himself always claimed he never signed.
At compilation of evidence stage, the Court-appointed expert Mr Mario Mifsud, a pharmacologist, testified that the substance in question was not ecstasy but MCCP – which at the time was not scheduled on either the Dangerous Drugs Ordinance or the Medical & Kindred Professions Act (MCCP was eventually scheduled in May 2007, and is now illegal).
In February 2007, the Bill of Indictment was filed against Marsden in the Criminal Court. On the basis of Mifsud’s earlier evidence, the charges of importation and possession of ecstasy pills with intent to supply were dropped, but the charge of conspiracy to deal in the drug ecstasy was retained, with the prosecution arguing that though the pills were not illegal, Marsden himself thought they were.
Marsden was found guilty of this charge by eight of nine jurors, and was sentenced to 25 years (the maximum possible) by Mr Justice Joseph Galea Debono. At that point he had already spent over a year in prison, having been initially denied bail.
Two years later, in November 2009 the Court of Criminal Appeal overturned Galea Debono’s ruling, on the basis that the prosecution had failed to prove that any of his presumed co-conspirators had illegal drugs in mind in connection with the MCCP discovered in his car, or that Marsden himself thought the pills were illegal.
Marsden has announced his intention to sue the State for compensation for human rights violations.
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Marsden was arrested in 2006, after 50,000 capsules of a substance believed to be ecstasy were discovered in his possession. He was eventually sentenced to 25 years for conspiracy to traffic in the illegal drug, even after a chemical analysis revealed that the pills in question were not ecstasy, and – more ominous still – they were not even illegal.
