Malta’s courts have just sentenced a driver to six months imprisonment for causing a fatal traffic accident, which is the exact same sentence it recently dished out to a woman for possessing 6.5g of cannabis. 

Joseph Piscopo, 36, was sentenced today for running over 79-year-old Salvatore Attard back in 2016, sending him flying 18.3 meters through the air and eventually resulting in his death.

Although the pensioner was negligent in the way he crossed the road, the court found Piscopo mindful for his own negligence as he was speeding and the elderly man was already three quarters across the road when he was hit. The road was dry at the time and there were no brake marks.

Piscopo was sentenced to six months in jail, disqualified from holding a driving license for five years and subjected to a €2000 fine in court costs.

A similar sentence was recently handed to 39-year-old Marie Claire Camilleri, not for manslaughter, but for the far more devious crime of being in possession of 6.5 grams of cannabis.

The magistrate who sentenced Camilleri said her hands were tied as the law obliges the courts to jail people found guilty of growing more than one plant of cannabis for a minimum of six months. 

Camilleri will now serve the same severity of a sentence as Piscopo, whose crime caused the death of an individual.  

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