Communicated on 6 July 2015

FIRST SECTION

Application no. 14431/06 Aleksandr Valeryevich ALEKSANDROV against Russia lodged on 10 February 2006

STATEMENT OF FACTS

The applicant, Mr Aleksandr Valeryevich Aleksandrov , is a Russian national, who was born in 1983 and lives in the town of Cheboksary, Chuvashia Republic . He is represented before the Court by Mr M. Moshkin , a lawyer practising in the Moscow Region .

A. The circumstances of the case

The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.

On 19 July 2005 the Chertanovskiy District Court of Moscow found the applicant guilty of having assaulted a police officer and sentenced him to a year of imprisonment to be served in a colony-settlement. The District Court refused to authorise probationary sentence, having reasoned as follows:

“When sentencing the defendant Mr Aleksandrov , the court takes into account the nature and degree of the social dangerousness of the committed crime, all circumstances of the case and information on the defendant ’ s personality: [the applicant] had never been held criminally or administratively liable before, he is not registered [as a drug addict or a person suffering from psychotic disorders], he was given positive characteristics at the places of his residence and work, his military registration has been annulled given his suffering from a kidney disease; the court accepts the listed circumstances as those mitigating the defendant ’ s guilt; however, it does not find any ground to sentence [the applicant] to probation or to a fine, given the particular circumstances in which the offence had been committed and the fact that [the applicant] does not have the permanent place of residence in Moscow and Moscow Region”.

The applicant appealed, having argued, inter alia , that he had been discriminated against in view of the trial court ’ s refusal to sentence him to probation given the lack of his permanent residence in Moscow or Moscow Region. The applicant stressed that the trial court had refused to amend his sentence, despite the fact that it had acknowledged a number of circumstances which had called for the mitigation of his sentence.

On 29 August 2005 the Moscow City Court upheld the judgment of 19 July 2005, having fully endorsed the trial court ’ s reasoning. While addressing the applicant ’ s complaint pertaining to the sentence, the City Court held that the trial court had complied with every legal requirement and had issued a well-founded judgment, having sentenced the applicant to the actual incarceration.

B. Relevant domestic law

Article 73 of the Russian Criminal Code defines the procedure for the imposition, supervision and amendment of a sentence of probation. In particular, a sentence of probation may be imposed when the actual sentence does not exceed eight years of imprisonment and when a court is convinced that the correction of a convict is possible without his/her being incarcerated.

Article 73 (as it read at the material time) did not allow the imposition of a probationary sentence in a single case: when the defendant was found guilty of a sexual offence committed against a minor.

A court, when deciding whether to impose a sentence of probation, had to take into account the nature and degree of the social dangerousness of the committed crime, the personality of the offender, including mitigating and aggravating circumstances, the lists of which (approximate for the former and exhaustive for the latter) were laid down in Articles 61 and 63 of the Criminal Code.

While imposing a probationary sentence, a court needs to take into account the convict ’ s age, his state of health and his ability to work to ensure that the convict is able to perform other obligations accompanying the sentence of probation, such as not to change the place of permanent residence, employment, studies, without a prior notification of specific state authorities; not to attend certain paces or events; to undergo treatment against drug or alcohol addiction, etc.

Article 63 of the Code provides a long and exhaustive list of circumstances aggravating a sentence. The absence of residence in a specific region of the Russian Federation is not in the list.

COMPLAINT

The applicant complained under Article 5 § 1 (a) of the Convention in conjunction with Article 14 of the Convention that the trial court had discriminated against him purely on the basis of his having had no residence in Moscow or Moscow Region and had refused to authorise his probation in lieu of incarceration.

QUESTION TO THE PARTIES

Given the trial court ’ s refusal to impose a probationary sentence on the applicant in view of his having no permanent residence in Moscow or Moscow Region, h as the app licant suffered discrimination contrary t o Article 14 of the Convention read in conjunction with Article 5 § 1 (a) of the Convention ?