Prosecutors 'knowingly' abusing law in child support cases, appeals court finds

A man who racked up nine months of jail after he was charged nine separate times for failing to pay child support had his fundamental rights breached, a judge ruled on Monday. 

Joseph Muscat (not the former prime minister) was arraigned in July 2021 for neglecting to pay his former partner child support for the children that they share. It later emerged that he had been charged with the same offence on eight separate occasions between October 2020 and June 2021. 

In each instance, Muscat was found guilty and sentenced to a month of jail time, racking up nine months for nine individual infractions. 

However, in an appeal, lawyer Arthur Azzopardi argued that Muscat’s right to a fair trial had been impinged by the way with which his client had been charged with nine separate instances of the same offence, rather than one continuous one. 

The Criminal Code, he argued, caters for instances when a person is accused of committing the same crime with the same person and can be made to answer for one continuous offence, which can even see punishment meted out increased by a degree or two at the court’s discretion. 

Rather than doing so, prosecutors had chosen to charge Muscat with each...