Civet v. France [GC]

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 10

September 1999

Civet v. France [GC] - 29340/95

Judgment 28.9.1999 [GC]

Article 5

Article 5-3

Length of pre-trial detention

Length of detention on remand: preliminary objection allowed

Article 35

Article 35-1

Exhaustion of domestic remedies

Effective domestic remedy

Appeal to the Court of Cassation (France) against detention on remand: preliminary objection allowed

(Extract from press release)

Facts: The applicant, Daniel Civet, a French national, was born in 1947 and is currently in prison in Aiguebelle (France). The applicant, who was the subject of a criminal investigation into allegations that he had committed a number of rapes, was charged and remanded in custody on 7 October 1993 by an investigating judge of Saint-Etienne tribunal de grande instance. From May 1994, the applicant submitted a number of applications for release, which were all dismissed by the investigating judge and the Indictment Division of the Lyons Court of Appeal. On 4 October 1994 the Court of Cassation struck out his sole appeal on points of law against a judgment upholding the dismissal of his application for release. On 27 June 1996 the applicant was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment by the Assize Court for the département of the Loire.

The applicant complained of the length of his pre-trial detention. He relied on Article 5 § 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights (the right to trial within a reasonable time or to release pending trial).

Law: Government’s preliminary objections - The Government’s main submission, as it had been before the Commission, was that Mr Civet had not exhausted domestic remedies as he had failed to submit the ground of appeal based on Article 5 § 3 of the Convention for examination by the Court of Cassation. The Government contended that an appeal on points of law to the Court of Cassation was a remedy which should have been used in relation to pre-trial detention. The Court noted that the Court of Cassation was indeed bound by the Indictment Division’s unappealable findings of fact. That position was justified by the nature of an appeal on points of law to the Court of Cassation, a remedy whose purpose was different from that of an ordinary appeal. As the possibilities of appealing to the Court of Cassation were limited by Article 591 of the Code of Criminal Procedure to breaches of the law, the Court of Cassation, unlike a court of appeal, did not have jurisdiction to reassess matters of pure fact.  However, in the Court’s opinion, this did not mean that the “facts” and the “law” could be conceived of as two radically separate fields or that reasoning which effectively denied that the two were interwoven and were complementary was acceptable. Notwithstanding that its jurisdiction was limited to examining grounds “of law”, the Court of Cassation nonetheless had the task of checking that the facts found by the tribunals of fact supported the conclusions reached by them on the basis of those findings. Thus, over and above examining whether a judgment referred to it complied with the formal requirements, the Court of Cassation ascertained that, regard being had to the facts of the case, the Indictment Division had given adequate reasons for its decision to prolong pre-trial detention. If it had not, its decision would be quashed. The Court therefore considered that the Court of Cassation was in a position to assess, on the basis of its examination of the proceedings, whether the judicial authorities had complied with the “reasonable time” requirement of Article 5 § 3 of the Convention.

In sum, Mr Civet, in failing to appeal to the Court of Cassation, did not provide the French courts with the opportunity which was in principle intended to be afforded to Contracting States by Article 35, namely the opportunity of preventing or putting right the violations alleged against them. The objection that domestic remedies had not been exhausted was therefore well-founded.

Conclusion: preliminary objection allowed (12 votes to 5).

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

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes

Full & Egal Universal Law Academy