Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 177
August-September 2014
C.W. v. Switzerland - 67725/10
Judgment 23.9.2014 [Section II]
Article 5
Article 5-1
Deprivation of liberty
Renewal of therapeutic confinement on grounds of no improvement in patient’s condition since psychiatric report two years’ earlier: no violation
Facts – In September 2001 the applicant was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment. The sentence was suspended in favour of an “inpatient treatment order”. On 15 May 2007, when the initial term of the treatment order expired, the authorities refused the applicant’s request for conditional release and sought the extension of the order for a further five years. The applicant requested that the order be extended by a maximum of two years.
On 19 April 2010 the District Court extended the order by five years. The court based its decision on the opinion expressed by two doctors in a letter of 16 March 2010. The doctors confirmed the findings of a therapeutic report drawn up in July 2008 by the psychiatrists in the centre where the applicant had been placed and stated that, in their view, no further expert report was necessary given that the applicant’s condition had not improved. They recommended that the applicant should receive long-term treatment in a secure setting and that the treatment order should therefore be extended for five years. At the same time the two doctors advised the Cantonal Court to order an external expert report so as to avoid giving the applicant the impression of bias.
The applicant contended, in substance, that given that the increasingly distant temporal connection between his initial conviction and the extension of the treatment order to which he had been made subject, the judge should have ordered a complete reassessment of his dangerousness, to be carried out by an independent medical expert.
Law – Article 5 § 1: The decision in question had been based on the opinion of the psychiatrists in the centre where the applicant was being treated. However, this fact in itself did not raise an issue under Article 5 of the Convention. The applicant had not alleged that the bond of trust with the team treating him had been broken, that the diagnosis of his disorder had been incorrect or that the medication he had been receiving in the centre had not been appropriate. His differences of opinion with the care team, whose impartiality and compliance with the rules of professional conduct he had not disputed at any point, did not relate to the substance of the treatment order but essentially to its duration. Furthermore, even during the last set of proceedings before the District Court in July 2012 the applicant had not appealed against the order as such but had simply requested that it be extended for two years rather than five.
In those circumstances the Cantonal Court, in its judgment of 19 April 2010, had been justified in basing its decision on the opinion of the two doctors and on the 2008 and 2009 psychiatric expert reports when determining the duration of confinement which was best designed to minimise the risk of a repeat offence linked to the applicant’s disorder. In the absence of a clear challenge to the scientific and ethical validity of that opinion and of the 2008 and 2009 psychiatric expert reports, no external medical opinion had been necessary.
Accordingly, the Court, like the Federal Court in its judgment of 4 October 2010 – which, moreover, had been accompanied by detailed reasons – could discern no trace of arbitrariness in the judgment of the Cantonal Court.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
(See also Ruiz Rivera v. Switzerland, 8300/06, 18 February 2014, Information Note 171)
© 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