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Malta: No possession of drugs required for drug possession charges Raphael Vassallo Malta Today Wednesday 04 Sep 2013 A recent case in which a man was charged in court with possession of cannabis - even though the police found no cannabis on his person - turns out to be far more commonplace than one would think. Goran Stoyanovich, 33, was last week charged with possession of cannabis, an illegal substance, after admitting to the police under interrogation that he had smoked cannabis in the past. He was brought in for questioning in connection with the arrest of another individual - Milos Peric, 29 - who was found to be in possession of cocaine and a false passport. No illegal drugs were however traced to Stoyanovich, but this did not stop the police from pressing charges of possession, based only on his verbal admission of having previously smoked the substance. News reports of this incident elicited strong reactions, such as that of Green Party candidate Robert Callus, who observed: "In most other EU countries where possession of soft drugs is still illegal, the police tend to close an eye if they accidentally stumble on someone having some weed... Here, even if he hasn't got anything, they try to squeeze a confession... Same old story, strong with the weak and harmless..." But according to criminal lawyer Dr Joe Giglio, this case was no by means a one-off incident. In fact he claims that as many as half the cases pressed by the police for possession of illicit substances will not be based on the discovery of any drugs in the possession of the accused. "I would say a good 50% of all drug possession cases do not involve drug possession at all but are in fact based only on admissions by the accused," he told MaltaToday, adding that the police have a standard formula for how to extract such confessions from unwitting suspects. "The law as it stands is that possession of cannabis is illegal. The legal reasoning behind such possession charges is that an admission of having smoked cannabis implies that one would have had to be in possession of the drug in order to smoke it, and this is considered enough evidence to base a prosecution on." Giglio however questions the validity of this argument, arguing that harder evidence should be required to press charges of a crime having been committed. "But rightly or wrongly the law courts, presided over by judges and magistrates who would often have previously worked in the office of the Attorney General, have accepted this state of affairs." Giglio singles out a ruling by the Court of Criminal Appeal, presided over by former Chief Justice Vincent De Gaetano (himself a former AG who headed the office of the prosecution), which enshrined the practice by confirming that verbal admission of past crimes is sufficient to warrant present arraignments. Giglio is not the only lawyer to disagree with the prevailing modus operandi. Michela Spiteri, a lawyer who runs Without Prejudice, a website aimed at demystifying the legal process for the benefit of outsiders, argues that the same practice provides another reason why suspects should be very wary of what they actually say under police interrogation. One factor that many may be unaware of, she says, is that the law itself doesn't require that the police actually see and touch the drugs in order to take action against an alleged offender. "The way it is done is usually like this: the police get you to talk, they ask you questions, and when you release your statement you might say, once, three weeks ago, I smoked cannabis. That would be an admission that three weeks ago you were in possession of cannabis and smoked it. When they actually charge you, the charge sheet will couch it in terms which say that 'during the last month, X was in possession of cannabis'. "Technically that wouldn't be wrong because you yourself would have told them that on such and such a date, you smoked cannabis; and to smoke cannabis you have to be in possession of it. This is why keeping your mouth shut is so important..." Nonetheless 'real' possession charges (as opposed to charges based only on verbal admissions) are likelier to result in a conviction. "There are ways of getting around such charges because police make mistakes, and when you are talking about something that vague, it tends to be easier to get an acquittal. But still, that is the situation." http://www.maltatoday.com.mt/en/newsdetails/news/national/No-possession-of-drugs-required-for-drug-possession-charges-20130904
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