(Admissibility – Commission) The claimant, a United States national, said that the proceedings for his extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States infringed article 6(3)(d), because he was not permitted to cross-examine the witnesses against him in the United Kingdom.
Held: Although ‘the tasks of the Magistrates’ Court included the assessment of whether or not there was, on the basis of the evidence, the outline of a case to answer against the applicant’ and ‘[t]his necessarily involved a certain, limited, examination of the issues which would be decisive in the applicant’s ultim[at]e trial’, nevertheless, ‘these proceedings did not in themselves form part of the determination of the applicant’s guilt or innocence, which will be the subject of separate proceedings in the United States which may be expected to conform to standards of fairness equivalent to the requirements of article 6, including the presumption of innocence, notwithstanding the committal proceedings’. In these circumstances ‘the committal proceedings did not form part of or constitute the determination of a criminal charge within the meaning of Article 6 of the Convention’
Article 1 of the Convention: The undertaking given by High Contracting Parties in respect of everyone within their jurisdiction extends, in the Article 3 sphere, to a duty not to expose anyone to an irremediable situation of objective danger, even outside their jurisdiction.
Articles 2 and 3 of the Convention: Because Article 2 authorises capital punishment, pursuant to the law and a court sentence, this may create a long period of incertitude for the convicted person during the appeal proceedings in an elaborate judicial system. However, it cannot be held that this long period of uncertainty (the’death row phenomenon’) falls outside the notion of inhuman treatment (Article 3).
The terms of Article 2 do not support the contention that if a State were to fail to require binding assurances from the Stale requesting extradition that the death penalty would not be inflicted, this would constitute treatment- contrary to Article 3.
Article 3 of the Convention; Factors to be considered in assessing whether the long period of uncertainty experienced by the person condemned to death, during the appeal procedures (the ‘death row phenomenon’) amounts to inhuman treatment: the importance of the appeal system designed to protect the right to life, delays caused by the backlog of cases before the appeal courts, the possibility of a commutation of sentence by very reason of the duration of detention on ‘death row’.
Article 6 of the Convention: This provision does not apply to a court’s examination of an extradition request from a foreign State, even if the Court carries out an assessment of whether there is an outline of a criminal case to answer against the applicant.
Citations:
10479/83, [1984] ECHR 19
Links:
Statutes:
European Convention on Human Rights 6(3)(d)
Jurisdiction:
Human Rights
Cited by:
Cited – Lukaszewski v The District Court In Torun, Poland SC 23-May-2012
Three of the appellants were Polish citizens resisting European Arrest Warrants. A fourth (H), a British citizen, faced extradition to the USA. An order for the extradition of eachhad been made, and acting under advice each filed a notice of appeal . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Human Rights, Extradition
Updated: 20 December 2022; Ref: scu.451302