It's official: Magistrate Herrera is not to be trusted
Magistrate Herrera sandwiched between Charlon Gouder and another Super One reporter at her birthday party. Not only are they propagandists for the Labour Party, but they are also mature law students.
It has come to my knowledge that Magistrate Herrera is arguing that it is true the Chief Justice removed a total of 21 libel cases, involving politicians and journalists, from her control last April and transferred them to another magistrate, but she claims that she has been given another 25 cases since.
She must think her interlocutors are as intellectually and morally challenged as she is.
The Chief Justice removed those 21 cases from her – en masse – for two possible reasons only.
1. He could not trust her to be impartial, given her repeated socialising with politicians and journalists, some of whom are plaintiffs and defendants in those very cases, and/or 2. he was concerned about public perception about her impartiality and about justice not being seen to be done.
The removal of 21 cases of the same nature from Magistrate Herrera’s control, by the Chief Justice, is a historically unprecedented move and a grievous body-blow to her credibility and her standing, such as either was.
It was a public declaration, by the Chief Justice himself, that where those cases were concerned, she was not to be trusted. And quite frankly, if a magistrate is not to be trusted in 21 cases, then where does that leave the rest who have to appear before her?
The 25 new cases she has been given are irrelevant – a bit of theft here, hopefully not involving Robert Musumeci’s brother this time, a bit of GBH there, things she might just about be trusted to be impartial about (as long as she hasn’t slept with any of the prosecuting officers, of course, something about which the defendants can have no reassurance).
It is the 21 cases forcibly taken away from her that count, because those are the ones that make for an unprecendented move in the history of our law courts, as far as can be ascertained.
Magistrate Herrera has made legal history, but not in the way she hoped she would. She is the first magistrate to be relieved of a huge chunk of her caseload because she cannot be trusted.
While we battle on through the courts in a ridiculous defamation suit in which I am being prosecuted for saying that she looks like the back of a bus and has friends who use cocaine at her parties (never a good idea – the last member of the judiciary to vouch under oath for a friend and his drug use was Noel Arrigo with ‘I thought they were emeralds’ Godfrey Ellul), the Chief Justice – no less – had made it clear already, a full six months ago and unnoticed by all except the magistrate herself, those involved in the 21 cases and the magistrate who had the extra burden transferred to her, where he stands on the matter of whether Consuelo Herrera is to be trusted.
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What is GBH?
[Daphne – Grievous bodily harm.]
It is also the name of a relatively new designer drug. I thought you were referring to that.
[Daphne – I wouldn’t know about that.]
dery, you must be referring to the drug gamma-hydroxybutyric acid also known as GHB, the rape drug.
I think you are referring to GHB and it’s not new, nor a designer drug in a sense that it is a naturally occurring chemical (in humans). It’s like alcohol.
Codeine is a designer drug (a couple of molecules away from heroin and found in cough syrup), and a new one would be Meow Meow.
actually that’s GHB
Codeine is not a designer drug. It is a mild narcotic drug derived from the opium poppy, just like its bigger sister, heroin.
Some cough medicines still use it, but it is a scheduled drug under the narcotics act in this country.
Daphne, how can we exclude that the journalists of One, including the ones shown above, knew about this transfer of important cases but they chose not to inform their viewers about it?
The more I think about this case, the more I understand why Jose Herrera opened such an attack on the Chief Justice, after such a humiliating blow.
I am also wondering: is the Commission for the Administration of Justice still taking notes?
halluh lil-jose trdiu? ja qabda mnittnin halluh xamlilkom??????
Jason, I am asking myself why I am replying to you.
What worries me is not what Jose has done to us, but what he may do if he becomes a Minister of Justice.
Now where is that green soap? I stink.
Daphne your are perfectly right except in your fifth paragraph.
This is a non sequitur.
There can be no body-blow to credibility and standing when neither of these two attributes is there in the first place.
If there had been anything of the sort the person involved would have resigned on the spot out of shame.
What credibility? What standing?
All I can see is lying and laying.
Onestament, wiehed ma jistghax biss jibda jifhem kif Magistrat Scerri Herrera baqat tiddendel hemm fil-Qorti, qisu qatt ma gara xejn, wara dak l-att ta’ sfiduca kontrieha mill-Prim Mhallef stess.
Il-fatt li Consuelo Herrera baqat hemm meta kien gara dan huwa fieh in-nifsu dispett min naha taghha lejn il-Qorti. L-agir taghha jkompli jimmina il-fiducja fis-sistema tal-gustizzja f’ghajnejn il-poplu.
Li Consuelo Herrera raget ma hadet ebda pass biex twarrab, issa li hareg kollox fil-berah, hija qed tkompli tikkonferma kemm mhiex dejna li tibqa iz-zomm il-kariga ta’ magistrat.
One has to hope that new cases of libel – which tend to include high profile persons – will never again be given to Magistrate Herrera. This will surely reduce the “appeal” of the magistrate among her “fans”, and render her “dinner parties” ordinary. Less people will be tempted to put their arms around her or squeeze her into a sandwich, and perhaps even less to send her drinks.
On the positive side, she definitely can derive some important advantages from the transfer of the 21 cases: she now has more freedom to dine out in the presence of JPO, and she might spend more time getting to know Saviour Balzan by inviting him more frequently to her “dinner parties@ and ‘at homes’. While at it, she must not forget to put Kurt Farrugia on her guest list.
Such thick skin! A rhino would be proud.
Speaking of Noel Arrigo, are he and Godfrey Ellul still at Mount Carmel?
Still there, the psychiatrist in charge of the Edwardians puts his money in the front pocket of his shirt, one hears.
I am aware that a person could be accused of perjury if he had the intention of committing a crime or of thwarting the course of justice in giving false information under oath. I understand, as a non legal person, that it is not a matter of just telling a trivial lie when under oath.
The OED defines perjury as: “The action or an act of solemnly affirming the truth of a statement that one knows to be false, spec. (Law) of wilfully giving false evidence or testimony while under oath. Also, the action or an act of taking an oath which one does not intend to keep; the violation of a promise, vow, or solemn undertaking; a breach of oath.”
In consideration of the above I would ask the legal experts whether Magistrate Consuelo Scerri Herrera has, in fact violated the oath she took on being appointed as a magistrate, when she signed a legally binding promise of purchase document (konvenju) to purchase a property together with Dr. Carmelo Galea, one of the parties in a case, involving two million Euros, which case she was presiding at the time, and to booth deciding in his favour.
Apart from this konvenju, but still with regards to perjury, I strongly suggest to your legal representative, to ask the magistrate in court, whether she ever tried to thwart or in fact whether she lied blatantly when under oath, at any time during which she was being investigated by the Commission For The Administration Of Justice.
http://i790.photobucket.com/albums/yy184/babel_36/yan_carn.jpg
To borrow an expression from Daphne, this young lady is Jose Herrera’s handbag. She is invariably stuck to his side carrying his papers and ‘things’.
This is the very same Yanika Bugeja who reported a bus driver for being aggressive to an African man and who then ran to The Times to have her picture taken in a careful pose. Other people do their bit to fight racism and keep it to themselves. Not Dr Yanika Bugeja, who hopes that Jose will – ahem – sit up and take notice.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20101010/local/young-lawyer-stands-up-to-aggressive-bus-driver
One would think that the Super One TV cameraperrrsssonnnn would not mind if Jose Herrera put his handbag against his/her camera lens.