Европейский суд по правам человека
9 марта 2006 года
Facts
In June 2000 the applicant was placed under investigation on suspicion of murder and was placed in pre-trial detention. The court extended her pre-trial detention 6 times. All her appeals against the decisions were dismissed. The reasons given by the Latvian courts included the seriousness of the offence and, in some instances, the risk that she might reoffend or seek to evade justice. On 18 May 2001 the last order authorising the applicant’s detention expired, but the applicant was kept in prison under the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure. In October 2001 the Court committed the applicant for trial and ordered that she remain in prison pending trial. In September 2002 the applicant was found guilty. She was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment for manslaughter, which was reduced to 10 years on appeal.
Complaint
The applicant alleged that her detention on remand had failed to satisfy the requirements of Article 5 (1) of the Convention and that it had exceeded a reasonable time, in breach of Article 5 (3). She further complained that she had been denied an effective judicial review of her detention on remand, in breach of Article 5 (4) of the Convention.
Court’s ruling
Article 5 (1). On 18 May 2001 the order authorising the applicant’s detention had expired, but she had not been released. She had remained in prison for more than 4 months without authorisation by any judicial decision. That fact was sufficient to pose a serious problem under Article 5 (1). The applicant had been kept in prison on the basis of the norm of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which stipulated that “the time taken for all the defendants to take cognisance of the documents in the investigation file shall not be taken into account in calculating the length of detention pending trial”. However, the wording had been so vague as to raise doubts as to its precise implications and to be open to more than one interpretation. It did not clearly state that there was a requirement to keep the defendant in detention, still less that it was possible to do so without a warrant. The provision in question therefore failed to satisfy the requirements of “lawfulness” laid down by Article 5 (1). The automatic extension of the applicant’s pre-trial detention had been the result of a generalised practice on the part of the Latvian authorities which had no precise basis in legislation and had clearly been designed to compensate for the deficiencies in the Code of Criminal Procedure.
Article 5 (3). The applicant’s pre-trial detention had lasted for over 2 years. The reasons given in all the orders extending her pre-trial detention had been too brief and too abstract, since they went no further than mentioning certain statutory criteria while omitting to specify how those criteria applied to the individual case of the applicant. In addition, the orders had been drafted using a stereotypical model and repeated from one order to the next the same grounds in the same wording. The reasons which actually might have justified the applicant’s detention had become less relevant with time. However, the reasons given in the impugned orders had remained virtually identical and were clearly insufficient to satisfy the requirements of Article 5 (3).
Article 5 (4). The court orders extending the applicant’s detention had consisted of a standard text file, prepared in advance, with a few tiny changes made on each occasion before it was printed and signed in summary fashion at the end of each hearing. Such a practice was in breach of Article 5 (4) when, as in the instant case, it reflected a failure effectively to examine the parties’ observations. While the appellate court decisions had been more detailed than those of the court of first instance, all but one had simply made vague references to the seriousness of the offence, the fact that it had been perpetrated by an organised group, the personality of the applicant and the danger of collusion, without substantiating the allegations made. The applicant’s pre-trial detention had been decided on the basis of orders which gave no satisfactory reasons.
Thus, the Court found multiple violations of Article 5.