Eleanor Mangion’s Alleged Killer Gave Police Statements Without Lawyer And Must Now Be Dropped
Statements given to police by Eleanor Mangion-Walker’s alleged murderer, her ex-partner, must be discarded because a lawyer was not present at the time.
Mangion-Walker was murdered in Swieqi by hatchet blows to the head, after which her husband, Andrew Mangion, dumped her body in a warehouse in Qormi. They had a daughter of nine years together and were undergoing separation procedures.
At the time, the law only allowed suspects to consult their lawyer up to one hour before their interrogation. The lawyer’s presence was not yet mandatory.
However, a Times of Malta report detailed how a court said they “could not discard the fact that anything he could have said during the police questioning would render unfair the judicial process against him.”
Madam Justice Consuelo Scerri Herrera made a near 100-page decision, which among other things quoted the European Court of Human Rights stating that the accused requires assistance of a lawyer already at the initial stages of police interrogation.
Though in his statements he didn’t admit to killing Mangion-Walker, the interrogations were “quite voluminous” and there are several instances where he incriminated himself.
The judge ordered the removal of both statements, their transcript and any reference to the statements from the acts of the proceedings, including testimonies given by other people during the course of the compilation of evidence against the accused.
Police superintendent Keith Arnaud told the court that Mangion claimed that two armed men had grabbed his wife when she was leaving his Swieqi garage and murdered her before his very eyes.
Holding him at gunpoint, Mangion claimed, one of the two men got a plank of wood out of a shoulder bag and repeatedly bashed Mangion-Walker on the head with it. He said he panicked after the two men fled, as he feared he would be blamed for his wife’s murder.
Mangion-Walker’s body was found under wooden pallets in Qormi warehouse on July 3rd, 2016. Mangion was let out bail for the murder, after which he committed a violent robbery – for which he was also let out bail.
Mangion turned himself in few days after the murder and stands charged with killing mother of his young daughter, with a potential life sentence hanging over his head.
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