Information Note on the Court’s case-law 6

May 1999

Ledonne v. Italy (no. 2) - 38414/97

Judgment 12.5.1999 [Section II]

Article 6

Criminal proceedings

Article 6-1

Reasonable time

Length of criminal proceedings: violation

The case concerned the length of criminal proceedings against the applicant (more than 4 years 11 months for one degree of jurisdiction).

Law : The Court considered that the case was not complex. As regards the applicant's conduct, it noted that even if the applicant could be considered to be responsible for some of the delays, this could not justify the length of the periods in between individual hearings and certainly not the total duration of t he proceedings. Referring to the adjournment of one hearing for almost a year because of a lawyers' strike, the Court recalled that such an event cannot in itself render a Contracting State liable with respect to the "reasonable time" requirement but that the efforts made by the State to reduce any resultant delay are to be taken into account for the purposes of determining whether the requirement has been complied with. Since neither party had replied to the Court's question as to the length of the strike, it was unable to determine what efforts had been made but observed that the period seemed at first sight unduly long. The Court identified periods of inactivity totalling more than one year and four months imputable to the State’s authorities and found th at the Government had not provided any convincing explanation for these delays, the volume of work at the court in question not being such an explanation. It concluded that  the "reasonable time" requirement had not been met.

Conclusion : violation (5 votes to 2).

Article 41: TheCourt awarded the applicant 12,000,000 ITL as compensation for non-pecuniary damage but rejected his claims in respect of costs and expenses, noting that he had not submitted details of any costs incurred.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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