FIRST SECTION
DECISION
Application no. 48134/15
Ines BOJIĆ
against Croatia
The European Court of Human Rights (First Section), sitting on 12 June 2018 as a Committee composed of:
Aleš Pejchal, President,
Krzysztof Wojtyczek,
Jovan Ilievski, judges,
and Renata Degener, Deputy Section Registrar,
Having regard to the above application lodged on 22 September 2015,
Having regard to the observations submitted by the respondent Government and the observations in reply submitted by the applicant,
Having deliberated, decides as follows:
THE FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms Ines Bojić, is a Croatian national who was born in 1976 and lives in Zagreb. She was represented before the Court by Ms L. Horvat, a lawyer practising in Zagreb.
2. The Croatian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms Š. Stažnik.
A. The circumstances of the case
3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows.
4. On 17 May 2014, while driving her car in Zagreb, the applicant was stopped for speeding by a police officer using a hand-held laser camera. She was immediately issued with a penalty notice finding her guilty of the minor offence of speeding, fining her 1,000 Croatian kunas (HRK) and ordering her to pay costs and expenses of the proceedings in the amount of HRK 100 (in total approximately EUR 150).
5. On 20 May 2014 the applicant challenged the penalty notice before the Zagreb Minor Offences Court (Prekršajni sud u Zagrebu), arguing that it was based on incorrect observations on the part of the police officer. She submitted that at the time of the alleged offence there had been a number of other vehicles on the road and it had therefore been impossible to establish, on the basis of the device he had used, whether she or somebody else had been driving above the permitted speed limit. Moreover, she contended that the relevant traffic sign had not been visible. In support of her arguments the applicant provided a photograph taken at the scene of the alleged minor offence; she also asked to be heard in the proceedings.
6. On the basis of the applicant’s challenge to the penalty notice, summary minor-offence proceedings were opened in the Zagreb Minor Offences Court.
7. On 2 October 2014 the applicant was heard before a judge of the Zagreb Minor Offences Court. She denied the charges against her and asked the judge to examine further evidence. In particular, she requested that an investigation be conducted at the scene in order to ascertain the visibility of the road sign and that the police be ordered to provide information on the number of other speeding offences established at the same place at the relevant time.
8. The trial judge dismissed the applicant’s request on the grounds that obtaining such evidence would unnecessarily prolong the proceedings. However, the judge ordered that information on the functioning of the laser camera be obtained from the police.
9. On 29 October 2014 the Zagreb Minor Offences Court requested the police to provide information on the speed limit in the relevant area where the applicant had been caught speeding, in particular by providing a written report on the circumstances of the case from the police officer who had used the camera. The police were also requested to provide information on the technical functioning of the laser camera and the aptitude of the police officer to operate it.
10. On 4 November 2014 the police submitted a written report from the police officer who had caught the applicant speeding. The police officer submitted that at the relevant time he had been observing the traffic in an area where a road sign clearly indicated that the speed limit was 50 km/h. He had focused his laser camera on the applicant’s car and the camera had indicated that the applicant was driving at 81 km per hour. He had therefore stopped the applicant and issued her with a penalty notice, which she had immediately challenged, indicating that she would bring a case before the relevant minor offences court.
11. On 6 November 2014 the judge conducting the proceedings questioned the police officer and examined the evidence in the case file. During his questioning, the police officer argued that he remembered well the circumstances of the case and he reiterated the statement he had made in his written report. He also stated that in order to measure the speed of the applicant’s car, he had focused the laser directly at the car, as there had been no other vehicle in front of it, nor had it been in a line of traffic. In reply to the questions put by the judge, the police officer explained that the speed-limit road sign at the spot had been clearly visible. He could not remember how many cars he had caught speeding on that day, but he stressed that the laser camera had functioned properly and that he had been trained to operate it.
12. On 17 December 2014 the Zagreb Minor Offences Court found the applicant guilty of speeding, fined her HRK 1,000 and ordered her to pay the costs and expenses of the proceedings in the amount of HRK 500 (in total approximately EUR 200). The court held in particular that with due regard to the manner in which the applicant had construed her defence, it had examined the documentary evidence in the file and had summoned the police officer for questioning. On the basis of the evidence so obtained, it had had no reason not to accept the police officer’s evidence as credible and reliable, given that the applicant had not provided any convincing evidence supporting her defence. The court also stressed that the police officer’s explanation of the circumstances of the case had been consistent and there had been no reason to doubt that he had properly performed his official duties when fining the applicant.
13. As there was no possibility for the applicant to appeal to a higher court in the summary minor-offence proceedings, on 10 February 2015 she lodged a constitutional complaint before the Constitutional Court (Ustavni sud Republike Hrvatske), complaining that she had not been given an opportunity to participate effectively in the minor-offence proceedings against her.
14. On 19 March 2015 the Constitutional Court declared the applicant’s complaint inadmissible as manifestly ill-founded. The decision of the Constitutional Court was served on the applicant on 15 April 2015.
15. In May 2015 the payment of the fine and the costs of the minor-offence proceedings was enforced against the applicant.
B. Relevant domestic law
16. Section 53 of the Road Traffic Safety Act (Zakon o sigurnosti prometa na cestama, Official Gazette no. 67/2008, with further amendments) provides that the legal speed limit must be observed in residential areas.
17. The relevant provisions of the Minor Offences Act (Prekršajni zakon, Official Gazette no. 107/2007, with further amendments) are set out in the case of Marčan v. Croatia, no. 40820/12, §§ 21-22, 10 July 2014.
COMPLAINT
18. The applicant complained of a lack of fairness in the summary minor-offence proceedings against her on charges of a road traffic offence. She relied on Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
THE LAW
19. Complaining of a lack of fairness in the summary minor-offence proceedings, the applicant relied on Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, which, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:
“In the determination of ... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair ... hearing ... by [a] ... tribunal ...”
20. The Government contested the applicant’s argument.
A. The parties’ submissions
21. The Government submitted that the applicant had not suffered any significant disadvantage in the summary minor-offence proceedings against her. Moreover, no issue of a lack of fairness in the proceedings had arisen in this case. In particular, in the Marčan case (cited above) the Court had already held that summary minor-offence proceedings in Croatia were not per se contrary to the requirements of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention. In the case at hand, the applicant had had an opportunity to put forward all her relevant defence arguments and to ask to be heard before the relevant court. Moreover, although her submissions had been vague and general, the court had duly examined all her arguments and had obtained further evidence in this respect. It was true that the applicant had not been invited to the hearing at which the police officer had been questioned, but she had not requested that the police officer be heard and his evidence related to facts that were already known to the applicant.
22. The applicant accepted that she had not suffered serious consequences as a result of her conviction for a minor offence. However, she considered that respect for human rights required the examination of the case on the merits and that her case had not been properly examined by the domestic courts. She contended that the minor offences court had not genuinely examined her submissions and had not given equal weight to the evidence adduced for and against her. She had not asked to be present for the questioning of the police officer because she had not known that he would be questioned. However, in the applicant’s view, after it had decided to question the police officer, the minor offences court had been obliged to invite her to the hearing irrespective of whether or not she had made an explicit request in that respect. The applicant also contended that she had tried to participate actively in the proceedings but that the court had arbitrarily denied her the right to examine the evidence adduced during the proceedings.
B. The Court’s assessment
23. The Court finds it unnecessary to address all of the Government’s arguments, as the complaint is in any event inadmissible for the following reasons.
24. At the outset, the Court would stress that although the criminal law aspect of Article 6 § 1 is applicable in the present case, the minor road-traffic offence for which the applicant was convicted, does not as such belong to the traditional categories of criminal law to which the criminal-head guarantees of Article 6 apply with their full stringency (see, amongst others, Marčan, cited above, § 37, with further references).
25. In the Marčan case (cited above, §§ 40-41) the Court found that there was nothing allowing it to conclude that the system of summary minor-offence proceedings, which leaves the decision as to the need to hold an oral hearing or take particular procedural actions with the possible participation of the parties to the judge’s discretion, to be incompatible per se with the guarantees enshrined in Article 6. However, the Court stressed that in each case it was necessary to examine whether, in the particular circumstances of the case, the domestic courts’ discretion as to the conduct of the summary minor-offence proceedings had been exercised in a way which was compatible with the requirements of Article 6.
26. In the present case, as in the Marčan case, the applicant was able to deny that she had committed the offence and to submit all the factual and legal arguments which she considered helpful to her case. She did so firstly in her written objection to the penalty notice, by which she sought a judicial review, and then in the course of her questioning at the hearing before the Zagreb Minor Offences Court (see paragraphs 5 and 7 above).
27. In her submissions, the applicant merely disputed that it was her car whose speed had been measured and challenged the visibility of the speed-limit road sign (compare Suhadolc v. Slovenia (dec.), no. 57655/08, 17 May 2011). With regard to the former argument, she limited herself to suggesting that there had been a number of other vehicles on the road, without explaining how that might have impeded the police officer in properly measuring the speed at which she had been driving. As to the argument concerning the lack of visibility of the road sign, the applicant provided photographs to support her submission.
28. The minor offences court examined those submissions and found them unfounded. It did so after hearing the police officer who had observed the offence at issue (see paragraph 12 above). It is true that the applicant was not invited to the questioning of the police officer. However, she had not requested that the police officer be heard as a witness (compare Aubrecht v. Slovenia (dec.), no. 57653/08, 10 January 2012, and, by contrast, Milenović v. Slovenia, no. 11411/11, § 31, 28 February 2013, and Mesesnel v. Slovenia, no. 22163/08, § 39, 28 February 2013). The applicant did not argue that she had been prevented from making such a request and, given that the domestic courts accepted her request to be heard, there is no reason for the Court to believe that had she requested that the police officer be summoned for questioning in order to allow her to put the credibility of his findings to the test in an adversarial procedure, her request would not have been granted (see Marčan case, cited above, § 44).
29. In these circumstances, in view of the general nature of the applicant’s submissions (compare Berdajs v. Slovenia (dec.), no. 10390/09, 27 March 2012), the Court is not persuaded that the minor offences court was not able to resolve the case adequately on the basis of the evidence so obtained and without the need to hold another hearing in the applicant’s presence (see Suhadolc, cited above). Indeed, the evidence obtained by the court allowed it to address all of the applicant’s arguments, in so far as they were specific and substantiated.
30. The fact that, having heard the parties’ submissions, the minor offences court gave more probative weight and credibility to the evidence given by the police officer than that provided by the applicant is outside the Court’s scope of review, as the domestic court’s findings are not arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable. In this connection, the Court would reiterate that Article 6 § 1 of the Convention does not lay down any rules on the admissibility of evidence or the way in which evidence should be assessed, these being primarily matters for regulation by national law and the national courts. Normally, issues such as the weight attached by the national courts to particular items of evidence or to findings or assessments submitted to them for consideration are not for the Court to review. The Court should not act as a fourth-instance body and will therefore not question under Article 6 § 1 the national courts’ assessment, unless their findings can be regarded as arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable (see, amongst many others, Moreira Ferreira v. Portugal (no. 2) [GC], no. 19867/12, § 83 (b), ECHR 2017 (extracts)).
31. Against the above background, the Court is unable to conclude that the minor-offence proceedings before the domestic courts fell short of the requirements of a fair trial guaranteed under Article 6 of the Convention.
32. The Court therefore finds that the applicant’s complaint is manifestly ill-founded and must be rejected under Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.
For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,
Declares the application inadmissible.
Done in English and notified in writing on 5 July 2018.
Renata DegenerAleš Pejchal
Deputy RegistrarPresident
Full & Egal Universal Law Academy