Magistrate Joe Mifsud delivered his final judgement in a criminal case this morning via the medium of interpretive dance.
After reading out a poem during a verdict he delivered yesterday, and playing a Mike Spiteri song on his iPad in similar circumstances last January, Dr Mifsud went a step further today by performing his own original work at the end of a case involving aggravated burglary.
After reading out a summary of the case against Nicholas Debono, who was charged with breaking into a flat in Sliema armed with a knife, Dr Mifsud said a simple ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’ was not enough to convey the emotion and drama of the case he had just presided over.
The lights in the courtroom then went out, before a spotlight shone onto the magistrate, who was now wearing a black leotard.
As low-fi experimental trip-hop began playing on his iPad, Dr Mifsud burst into a series of grandiloquent arm movements and crouches that seemed to vaguely represent a man smashing a window, ransacking a flat and threatening its occupants with violence.
The next movement of the dance involved several leaps across the courtroom, apparently signifying Debono’s attempt to escape from the police and resist arrest a week after the robbery.
The dance ended when Mifsud dropped to the floor, lay in the fetal position and said the word “greed” three times.
As the spotlight went out and the courtroom lights came back on, Dr Mifsud was nowhere to be seen.
After a long silence, Debono asked: “So…am I guilty or not?”
The Times culture section gave the trial four stars out of five.
