A Court of Criminal Appeal has doubled the period of suspension of a lawyer’s driving licence to two years and ordered him to pay Lm1,100 in damages for ramming a car in its side and driving off.
Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano also ruled that the court’s sentence of university lecturer and former newspaper editor Alfred Grech, be passed on to Commission for the Administration of Justice for its review.
Grech, former editor of the defunct The Edge, was found guilty of having rammed into Jacqueline Delicata’s car in Victoria, before speeding off home. He left Delicata’s rented car with damages to the front bumper, right-hand doors and driver’s mirror, the front mudguard, and scratched paintwork all across the side.
The first court had found him guilty of driving without a valid drivers’ licence for over two years, and without a valid insurance cover, ordering the suspension of his licence for one year.
The Court of Criminal Appeal, presided by Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano, also found Galea’s criminal record showed four other sentences related to driving offences, three of which were driving a car without an insurance cover.
Jacqueline Delicata was on her way to the Ta’ Pinu church when her rented car was rammed into by Dr Alfred Galea. She reported the matter at the Rabat police station, where Sergeant Mario Sciberras tracked down the lawyer’s number through his car licence plate.
When called upon by the police, Grech refused to come down to the police station with his car. In his court testimony, PS Mario Sciberras said Grech insulted him and warned him to stay away from his house, adding the abrasive insult: “Surgent tat-toqba ta’ s****. Assassin.”
The police made their way to Grech’s house where his Mazda 323F was photographed to corroborate the corresponding damages.
Grech himself never turned up to testify in court to contest the charges. He was however liberated from the charge of having made inappropriate use of the telephone by insulting the police sergeant.