Published on 12 April 2021

FIFTH SECTION

Application no. 5084/18 Sergiy Onisiyevych KUPINSKYY against Ukraine lodged on 15 January 2018 communicated on 23 March 2021

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

The application concerns the irreducibility of the applicant ’ s life sentence, which is subject of well-established case-law of the Court ( Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 66069/09 and 2 others, ECHR 2013 (extracts); Petukhov v. Ukraine (no. 2) , no. 41216/13, 12 March 2019).

The peculiarity of the present case is that the applicant was sentenced to a reducible life sentence in Hungary and then transferred to Ukraine where his sentence was converted by Ukrainian courts in accordance with the Ukrainian criminal law. Even though, as the Court established in the abovementioned Petukhov (no. 2) judgment, the Ukrainian legislation did not provide for the reducibility of the life sentence and did not contain the relevant procedure, the converted sentence indicated that the applicant could ask for a conditional release after having served twenty years. The applicant requested his conditional release on two occasions and those requests were rejected by the first-instance court both for a lack of grounds, as the applicant did not qualify for an early release because of his behaviour, and for a lack of procedure for deciding on an early release of life prisoners. Although in both cases the court of appeal focused exclusively on the applicant ’ s behaviour as a ground for the refusal of his requests, the applicant reasonably doubted that such requests could lead to any other outcome due to the current state of domestic law.

The applicant complains that although the Hungarian courts sentenced him to a reducible life sentence, the Ukrainian courts converted that sentence to a de facto irreducible life sentence in violation of Articles 3 and 7 of the Convention.

QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES

1. Has there been a violation of the applicant ’ s rights under Article 3 of the Convention on account of his allegedly irreducible life sentence ( Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 66069/09 and 2 others, ECHR 2013 (extracts), László Magyar v. Hungary , no. 73593/10, 20 May 2014, Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom ([GC], no. 57592/08, 17 January 2017, and Petukhov v. Ukraine (no. 2) , no. 41216/13, 12 March 2019)?

2. In particular, were the undertakings of the Ukrainian courts, when converting the applicant ’ s sentence, to guarantee the applicant a possibility of conditional release after having served 20 years of his sentence enforceable under the Ukrainian law; were the Ukrainian courts competent to grant such conditional release in the case of a life prisoner, like the applicant, and what was the procedure for them doing so?

3. Did the decision of 26 September 2007 on the conversion of the applicant ’ s reducible life sentence in Hungary to a de facto irreducible life sentence in Ukraine constitute a new penalty within the meaning of Article 7 (see and compare Ciok v. Poland ( dec. ), no. 498/10 , 23 October 2012) ? If so, have the requirements of Article 7 been respected in the present case?