Maurice Zarb Adami can be said to be a victim of a bungling bureaucracy. The university lecturer who won a discrimination case in the European Court of Human Rights for being obstinately listed as juror for over 30 years, is back on the list for jury foremen for 2008.
He can be expected not to attend, this being the second time since winning his case in the Strasbourg court which found the government to have forcefully made him perform jury service.
As a university lecturer, Zarb Adami is exempt from jury service but his petitions before the domestic courts all proved futile before taking the matter to the ECHR in 2002, which found the government in violation of Article 14 of the European Convention on forced labour and slavery.
Since 1971, Zarb Adami has been placed on the list of jurors and continues to remain on the list to this day. In 1997 he refused to serve as juror and was fined Lm100. After refusing to pay the fine, he took the case to the Civil Court, where he said the law exempted women from jury service, but not men. He also claimed the Maltese system was sexually discriminatory: between 1992 and 1997 only 3% of women served as jurors.
His appeal before the Constitutional Court, where he said that jury service was a burden, requiring jurors to leave their work to attend court hearings, was also rejected.
Then in 2003, as a lecturer at the University of Malta, he unsuccessfully sought exemption from jury service, since the Criminal Code exempts full-time university lecturers from jury service.