Pollster Vince Marmarà was called before Judge Edwina Grima over a survey concerning Yorgen Fenech and the Daphne Caruana Galizia murder case which was carried out just weeks before Fenech’s trial began.The survey, commissioned by Fenech’s uncle Ray Fenech, questioned a randomly selected sample of 500 people about the businessman, Caruana Galizia, the police investigation and Malta’s judicial system.According to Times of Malta, questions were vetted by one of Fenech’s defence lawyers and included whether respondents believed Fenech had ordered the journalist’s assassination, whether the murder’s mastermind had been caught and their views on the presidential pardon granted to self-confessed middleman Melvin Theuma.The timing of the survey raised concerns because the list of potential jurors had already been published.Authorities were alerted amid fears that prospective jurors could have been among those contacted, with investigators tracing the telephone number used for the polling back to Marmarà.Judge Grima reportedly rebuked Fenech’s defence team over the survey’s timing and its failure to disclose that the polling had taken place. However, she found no grounds for criminal action.Marmarà stressed that he was never arrested and had provided authorities and the court with all information requested of him. He defended the research as a legitimate method of analysing public perceptions surrounding legal proceedings, saying similar research is conducted internationally.The pollster said telephone numbers were randomly generated and that his work was carried out independently and according to professional and ethical principles.The June survey was the third carried out on the case, following previous polling in 2021 and 2023. Fenech’s defence argued that the research was intended to assess whether their client had been subjected to prejudicial publicity before his trial, denying that it was intended to influence prospective jurors.Meanwhile, lawyer Jason Azzopardi, who represented the Caruana Galizia family as parte civile, said he was the person who first alerted the court after being contacted on 4th June by someone who claimed to have received a survey call about Fenech’s trial.Azzopardi said he subsequently appealed publicly for others who had received similar calls to contact him, with around 50 people coming forward. Adding that the court did order the telephone survey to stop around three weeks before the trial began.Fenech was ultimately acquitted by a jury of complicity in Caruana Galizia’s murder earlier this week.•