Judge dismayed by “tactics” of lawyers on both sides in Caruana Galizia murder case

The criminal judge presiding over the jury trial of Yorgen Fenech for the murder of Daphne Caruana Galizia has expressed his deep dismay at the tactics used by lawyers for both sides outside the courtroom.

She threatened that if this continued, she would order a hearing behind closed doors.

During a sitting on Thursday before Judge Edwina Grima, the judge called lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who represents the Caruana Galizia family, to the witness box. The judge informed Azzopardi that she had ordered that he be served with a notice filed by the defence asking the court to take action against the lawyer over statements he made in a recent interview published by Lovin Malta.

The defense also told the court that Azzopardi had made comments about the defendant on his Facebook page.

While under oath, Azzopardi was questioned about three Facebook posts.

He confirmed that he was the author of the posts in question, but denied the assumption that the last post was uploaded last week.

The judge ordered the lawyer to stop reading the entire post and asked him to confirm whether the posts were still online. If so, she would order him to delete the posts.

“I confirm under oath every word [I wrote]but what I find disturbing is that the note indicates that I violated the order you issued on Friday, August 30,” he said.

But when Azzopardi claimed he had been discriminated against, the court stopped him, pointing out that it had “never ordered the removal of the interview.”

The court explained that the order she was referring to could be found in the appeal judgment. “Orders are not only binding in court,” said the judge, adding that they were “very dissatisfied with both parties.”

The judge warned that if such incidents continued, she would have to hold hearings in the case behind closed doors in the future.

Fenech’s lawyer Charles Mercieca claimed that the breach occurred one day after the order was issued, prompting the court to remark: “Everyone is trying to mislead the court.”

The lawyers continued to argue loudly and interrupted the judge, who then ordered all lawyers out of the courtroom and into her office.

When the judge reappeared about twenty minutes later, he noted the motion calling for the deletion of the interview and a number of Facebook posts.

The judge made a final decision on the defendants’ August 29 motion, ordering that “no party shall make any public reference to the guilt or innocence of the defendant, who is still presumed innocent today, and that this shall be done in order to avoid prejudicing the judicial process.”

The judge also ordered that journalists in the courtroom not reproduce the content of the statements read by Azzopardi in the witness box and recalled that the ban on publishing the contents of the files in this case had been imposed in order not to jeopardise the trial before the jury.

After the case files were returned to the District Court so that court expert Martin Bajada could testify and carry out the tasks assigned to him by the Criminal Court, the session was adjourned until October 18.