Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 129

April 2010

C.B. v. Romania - 21207/03

Judgment 20.4.2010 [Section III]

Article 5

Article 5-1-e

Persons of unsound mind

Fourteen days’ confinement in psychiatric hospital to enable psychiatric reports to be prepared in connection with malicious-prosecution charge: violation

Facts – On 4 September 2002 at 6.30 a.m. police officers entered the applicant’s home by force and arrested him. They were acting on an order issued by the public prosecutor’s office the previous day in the context of proceedings against the applicant for malicious prosecution, according to which he was to be compulsorily detained for an expert psychiatric assessment. The applicant was detained for 14 days on the maximum-security ward of a psychiatric hospital. On an unspecified date he lodged a complaint against his compulsory detention. On 24 April 2003 the public prosecutor’s office returned the complaint to him. The applicant was eventually acquitted of the charges against him in November 2004.

Law – Article 5 § 1 (e): The way in which the compulsory detention order had been executed had clearly been disproportionate; the Court noted that the applicant had been detained by force. The public prosecutor’s order stating the need to detain the applicant had been based on the investigators’ doubts as to his state of mental health and on a medical certificate produced by a general practitioner who had never seen or examined the applicant and had recorded a diagnosis of schizophrenia which had no foundation in reality. As the applicant did not have a history of psychiatric problems, it was essential for any compulsory detention order to be preceded by a psychiatrist’s assessment. Furthermore, in the absence of any violent behaviour on his part or any evidence of a risk to himself or others, his detention had quite clearly not been justified on urgent grounds. In addition, there had been nothing in the referral letter from the forensic medical department to indicate that the applicant had displayed the slightest symptoms of mental illness or was dangerous. The criminal proceedings against him had been for malicious prosecution rather than for any offence sufficiently serious to suggest that he presented some kind of danger. While it was true that the applicant’s detention had been aimed precisely at obtaining a medical opinion in order to assess whether he possessed the necessary discernment to be held criminally responsible, and that he had been taken to a psychiatric clinic where he was seen by doctors, there was no indication that the doctors who admitted him to the psychiatric hospital had been asked whether it was necessary to compulsorily detain him for a forensic medical examination. These considerations were all the more valid since the report of the medical commission, issued after the applicant had been detained for two weeks, concluded that he had no psychiatric problems. In addition, the Government had not offered any explanation as to why other less severe measures had not been considered or, if they had, why they had been deemed insufficient to safeguard the personal or public interest requiring the applicant to be detained. There was nothing in the case file, either, to indicate that the applicant would have refused to undergo a psychiatric assessment of his own free will or that the medical experts had attempted to establish on the basis of the file whether the applicant was of unsound mind. Accordingly, his detention for a fourteen-day period had not been warranted and was incompatible with Article 5 § 1 (e).

Conclusion : violation (unanimously).

Article 5 § 4: The applicant’s complaint concerning his detention had been returned to him by the public prosecutor’s office at the first-instance court, on the ground that he had already been committed for trial and would be able to assert his rights before the court. Accordingly, his compulsory detention with a view to a psychiatric assessment, provided for by the Code of Criminal Procedure, had not been the subject of any review by the courts as to its necessity.

Conclusion : violation (unanimously).

Article 41: EUR 20,000 in respect of pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage.

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

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