FIRST SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 4315/18 Ladislav RIGO against Slovakia

The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 31 May 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Péter Paczolay, President, Alena Poláčková, Davor Derenčinović, judges, and Liv Tigerstedt, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 4315/18) against Slovakia lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 13 January 2018 by a Slovak national, Mr Ladislav Rigo, who was born in 1993 and was at that time detained in Košice (“the applicant”), and who was represented by Mrs I. Rajtáková , a lawyer practising in Košice;

the decision to give notice of the complaints under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (b) and (c) of the Convention to the Government of the Slovak Republic (“the Government”), represented by their Agent, Ms M. Bálintová;

the parties’ observations;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. The application concerns the applicant’s trial and conviction on the charge of mugging, the central complaint being that they were unfair and arbitrary in that the conviction was predominantly based on the applicant’s confession of 15 February 2012 and evidence from the victim of the robbery.

2. The confession had been made at the pre-trial stage in the absence of a lawyer and after the applicant had been deprived for some twenty hours of illegal substances to which he was addicted.

3. The victim had recognised the applicant as the perpetrator in an identity parade which the domestic authorities later found to have been irregular.

4. The applicant was convicted and sentenced to five and a half years’ imprisonment.

5. Against that background, the applicant complained under Article 6 of the Convention about various aspects of the fairness of his proceedings.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

6. In accordance with Article 19 of the Convention, the Court’s duty is to ensure that the obligations undertaken by the Contracting Parties to the Convention are observed. In particular, it is not its function to deal with errors of fact or law allegedly committed by a national court, unless and in so far as they may have infringed rights and freedoms protected by the Convention. Moreover, while Article 6 of the Convention guarantees the right to a fair hearing, it does not lay down any rules on the admissibility of evidence or the way it should be assessed, which are therefore primarily matters for regulation by national law and the national courts (see Garćia Ruiz v. Spain [GC], no. 30544/96, § 28, ECHR 1999-I, with further references).

7. The Court’s primary concern under Article 6 § 1 is to evaluate the overall fairness of the criminal proceedings. In its evaluation, it will take into account, if appropriate, the minimum rights listed in Article 6 § 3, which exemplify the requirements of a fair trial in respect of typical procedural situations which arise in criminal cases. They can be viewed, therefore, as specific aspects of the concept of a fair trial in criminal proceedings in Article 6 § 1 (see Ibrahim and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 50541/08 and 3 others, §§ 250 and 251, 13 September 2016, with further references). In that evaluation, the Court will have regard to the rights of the defence, but also to the interests of the public and the victims that crime is properly prosecuted (see Al-Khawaja and Tahery v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 26766/05 and 22228/06, § 118, ECHR 2011).

8. It is true that the applicant made his confession without being assisted by a lawyer. However, as noted by the Supreme Court in its decision on the applicant’s appeal on points of law, his situation was not one of those in which legal representation was mandatory under domestic law.

9. In so far as any such mandatory representation should have resulted from any doubts about the applicant’s ability to defend his rights (Article 37 § 2 of the Code of Criminal Proceedings), it is noteworthy that despite being assisted by a lawyer from the moment of his remand on 17 February 2012 the applicant had not sought to raise any such doubts before three levels of the ordinary courts and did so for the first time before the Constitutional Court. In addition to the fact that the confession was made in a state of deprivation of his drugs, which the Court will address below, the applicant referred in his constitutional complaint to his young age.

10. At the time of his confession, the applicant was eighteen years and eight months old. However, as noted by the trial court in its judgment, he had had five previous convictions. As some of them pre-dated the confession in the present case, when making it the applicant was not unaccustomed to the criminal-law context despite his young age.

11. As to the fact of being a drug addict at that time, the applicant made the confession after some twenty hours of being in police custody and hence deprived of his drugs. The Court notes first of all that his allegations have at all stages been vague, as exemplified by his submission in his cassation appeal to the effect that “it was not possible to conclude just like that ( bez ďalšieho ) that [his] statement was a statement of a person who at the time [of the confession] was fully capable of understanding and controlling the contents of his or her behaviour”. There has in particular not been any suggestion and evidence adduced, or proposed to be taken, to show that when making the confession the applicant was in fact incapacitated.

12. Moreover, the lack of any elements to question the applicant’s ability to understand and control his actions at the time of the confession must be seen inter alia in the light of the following circumstances.

13. In the course of the ensuing proceedings, in May 2012, the applicant was examined by two sworn experts in psychiatry in order to establish his mental capacity at the time of the suspected offence (13 January 2012) with a view to determining his criminal liability and ability to understand the proceedings against him. The experts concluded that, despite his drug addiction, the applicant’s capacity was not such as to impair his criminal liability and ability to understand the proceedings.

14. The experts had likewise been instructed to address any other facts of relevance established by their examination. Although the applicant was already represented by a lawyer at that time, he did not ask them to address specifically the question of his condition at the time of the confession. Their report accordingly contained no specific conclusions on the matter. Nevertheless, as noted by the courts in reply to the applicant’s objections, there was nothing in the experts’ report to raise any doubts about the applicant’s ability to understand and control his actions at the time of making the confession.

15. The above conclusion was reached by the domestic courts in judgments that superseded earlier judgments acquitting the applicant at first instance (quashed on appeal).

16. Moreover, prior to the confession, the applicant was informed of the right to appoint a lawyer, which he chose not to make use of. No objection has been advanced at the domestic level or before the Court as to the validity of this waiver, which the Court for its part has found no reason to doubt (for contrast see Zachar and Čierny v. Slovakia , nos. 29376/12 and 29384/12, §§ 72-74, 21 July 2015, and Leonid Lazarenko v. Ukraine , no. 22313/04, § 56, 28 October 2010).

17. To the extent that the applicant’s confession was challenged on the grounds that the principle of adversarial trial in relation to it had not been respected, the Court observes that this was so from the perspective of the applicant’s co-accused, who had not been able to attend the questioning in which the applicant had given the confession. As the applicant himself had obviously been present, there is no basis for contesting the confession under the principle of adversarial trial from his perspective.

18. As to the evidence given by the victim, it is true that he identified the applicant as one of the perpetrators of his mugging and that, as established by the cassation court, the identity parade in which the victim identified the applicant had been flawed. In particular, as established by the cassation court, prior to the identity parade, the police had shown the victim photographs of the perpetrators, whereby it had irreversibly frustrated the purpose of the exercise. Nevertheless, as also pointed out by the cassation court, the applicant’s conviction had sufficient basis in other evidence presented before the lower courts as follows.

19. There was witness evidence attesting to the applicant’s presence at the scene of the mugging. Expert evidence confirmed the victim’s injuries. The description of the assault by the victim was consistent with other available evidence. A further witness confirmed having bought from the applicant and his accomplice a laptop stolen from the victim.

20. Having regard to the above, the Court considers that, in so far as the applicant’s “fairness” complaints under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention have been substantiated, they raise issues which are of no more than a fourth-instance nature.

21. Essentially on the same grounds as mentioned above, the applicant also alleged a violation of his rights under Article 6 § 2 of the Convention.

22. The Court finds that the facts of the case do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the applicant’s rights under that provision.

23. The application is accordingly manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 23 June 2022.

Liv Tigerstedt Péter Paczolay Deputy Registrar President