The court of Consuelo Scerri Herrera

The magistrate & the blogger

The blogposts that Daphne Caruana Galizia had published about Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera were jaw dropping. They ranged from saying that the magistrate had slept with half the police officers to having a series of inappropriate sexual liaisons, from throwing parties in which heavy drugs were consumed to handing out judgements in cases in which she had a clear conflict of interest, developing property while pretending she wasn’t, and giving court-related work to her current partner at the time their affair was secret. And much more in between. 

Magistrate Scerri Herrera had asked the police to prosecute Caruana Galizia for criminal defamation. The first sign that there was something unreal about Scerri Herrera's case was that in her testimony she did not deny the lion's share of Caruana Galizia's allegations but picked instead on what seems to have caused her to feel most defamed: the suggestion that she looks like the back of a bus and wears inappropriate clothing, and the fact that her daughter is now the only one of her friends without a picture of her mother on Facebook. 

When she testified in court three months ago, Caruana Galizia made what was perhaps the most serious allegation of them all: that Scerri Herrera had a five-year secret affair with a senior-ranking police officer and kept the many incriminating letters he wrote her in the keeping of somebody else, so that her husband would not find them.

Caruana Galizia said under oath that the police officer in question first retrieved that bag of incriminating letters at Scerri Herrera’s request and a few hours later Scerri Herrera filed her report with the police who immediately moved to have Caruana Galizia questioned under arrest. Scerri Herrera’s lawyer did not cross-examine Caruana Galizia about this or deny it.

The second sign of the unreality of this case reached us today when Scerri Herrera withdrew her complaint and left the police with no option but to drop the charges. She did so after Caruana Galizia submitted her list of witnesses for Friday’s now-aborted sitting.

Today, Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera stands in public, in court and in society with the most serious of Daphne Caruana Galizia allegations left undenied and uncontested. Some of them might involve breaking the law. Others, while being perfectly legal, bring her position into serious disrepute. Most of them constitute behaviour which is unbecoming to a resident of Kordin, let alone a magistrate.

Where do we go from here? Doing the Maltese thing and hope that matters would die quietly is just not on. Time does not erase undenied allegations of a magistrate’s grossly unethical behaviour.

The only course left is a motion of impeachment, a power which any member of parliament has and which requires a two thirds majority to pass. If the PN in government saw fit to impeach a member of the judiciary for failing to turn up for work, I do not see how they do can turn a blind eye to this case.