Published on 15 June 2026
FIRST SECTION
Application no. 39154/22
Elio CAVONE and Others
against Italy
lodged on 3 August 2022
communicated on 26 May 2026
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the duration of criminal proceedings and the effectiveness of remedies available in domestic law in that respect.
In 2011 criminal proceedings were instituted against the applicants for offences including forgery, incitement to abuse of office and unlawful construction. They were stayed in 2013 pending the outcome of civil proceedings brought by a third party in 2006 and aimed at establishing the actual ownership of immovable assets to which the criminal charges were related. The applicants were not parties to those civil proceedings. In 2018, while an appeal on points of law was still pending in the civil proceedings, the criminal proceedings resumed upon request of the Public Prosecutor and of the applicants. Those proceedings ended in 2019 with the applicants’ acquittal by the District Court.
The applicants’ subsequent complaint about the excessive length of the proceedings was dismissed on the basis of Article 2 § 2-quater of Law no. 89 of 24 March 2001, as amended by Law no. 134 of 7 August 2012 (the “Pinto Act”), which provides that, for the purposes of calculating the overall duration of proceedings, no account is to be taken of periods during which the proceedings are stayed. Their appeal on points of law to the Court of Cassation, featuring a question of constitutionality of the abovementioned provision, was addressed and dismissed by decision no. 12001 of 2022, on the grounds that the parties could have intervened in the civil proceedings, in order to subsequently claim compensation for their excessive duration.
Relying on Articles 6 and 13 of the Convention, the applicants complain that the length of the criminal proceedings against them was excessive and that the application of Article 2 § 2-quater of the Pinto Act rendered that remedy ineffective in their case.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Was the length of the criminal proceedings in the present application in breach of the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see, among many others, Cocchiarella v. Italy [GC], no. 64886/01, ECHR 2006-V)?
2. Having regard to the exclusion, under Article 2 § 2-quater of the Pinto Act, of periods during which proceedings are stayed from the calculation of their overall duration, did the applicants have at their disposal an effective remedy, as required by Article 13 of the Convention, enabling them to obtain adequate redress for the alleged excessive length of the proceedings?
APPENDIX
Applicant’s Name
Year of birth
Nationality
Place of residence
Represented by
Elio CAVONE
1948
Italian
Campobasso
Ennio CERIO
Jacopo DI CRISTOFARO
1971
Italian
Campobasso
Ennio CERIO
Luca DI CRISTOFARO
1965
Italian
Campobasso
Ennio CERIO