Communicated on 28 May 2019
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 17262/19
D.A.
against Russia
lodged on 21 March 2019
STATEMENT OF FACTS
1. The applicant, Ms D.A., is a Russian national, who was born in 2003 and lives in Perm. She is represented before the Court by Mr A. Laptev and Ms E. Pershakova from the Public Verdict fund in Moscow and Mr D. Galitskiy, her representative in the domestic proceedings.
2. The facts of the case, as submitted by the applicant, may be summarised as follows.
3. On 15 April 2016 the Industrialnyy District Court in Perm granted an application by the local police and ordered the applicant’s placement in a temporary detention centre for juvenile offenders. The court noted that the applicant, who had turned fourteen, had a history of stealing, sniffing chemicals, kicking her classmates, and sexually harassing girls. She skipped classes, earned low grades, smoked, hung out with boys and referred to herself using a male name. Her parents had been sanctioned for her unacceptable behaviour. Having regard in particular to the applicant’s “anti-social conduct”, “propensity to commit offences” and insufficient parental control, the court committed her to the juvenile-offenders facility for a period of up to thirty days. The applicant was taken to the centre directly from the courtroom.
4. Counsel for the applicant and her parents filed statements of appeal. On 4 May 2016 the President of the Perm Regional Court quashed the placement order on the grounds that the assessment of the applicant’s situation by the District Court had been incomplete. He instructed the lower court to undertake a new assessment of the matter. The applicant was released on the same day.
5. On 9 June 2016 the District Court rejected the application for the applicant’s placement, finding that her three-week stay in the centre had been conducive to improving her behaviour and that there was no need to place her in the centre for one additional week.
6. The applicant, represented by her mother, sued the domestic authorities for compensation in respect of non-pecuniary damages which she had suffered on account of eighteen days’ deprivation of liberty.
7. On 17 November 2017 the Sverdlovskiy District Court in Perm dismissed her claim. Referring to Article 1070 of the Civil Code which governs liability for damage caused by unlawful acts of State bodies, it held that the kind of deprivation of liberty, to which the applicant had been subjected, was not included on the exhaustive list of situations giving rise to strict liability in the first paragraph of that provision. Furthermore, the applicant was unable to produce a final criminal conviction of the judge who had issued the contested decision which was a required element for an award of damages under the second paragraph of Article 1070.
8. On 14 February 2018 the Perm Regional Court dismissed an appeal in which counsel for the applicant sought to rely on the Convention provisions.
9. On 7 June 2018 the Regional Court refused her leave to appeal to the cassation instance. It added that the right to compensation could have accrued to the applicant only if the application for her placement had been refused because of insufficient evidence that she had committed offences. That was not the case here. The District Court’s decision of 9 June 2016 had established that she had been guilty of such offences but her detention had been no longer necessary “because she had already served her punishment”.
10. On 13 September 2018 the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation rejected the cassation appeal at final instance.
COMPLAINTS
11. The applicant complains under Article 5 of the Convention that she was denied compensation for the deprivation of liberty she had endured.
12. The applicant complains under Article 6 § 2 of the Convention that the Regional Court’s decision of 7 June 2018 declared her guilty by referring to the “punishment” she had already “served”.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Having regard to the Court’s findings in respect of the kind of deprivation of liberty to which the applicant was subjected (see Blokhin v. Russia [GC], no. 47152/06, § 171, 23 March 2016), has there been a contravention of the provisions of Article 5 rendering Article 5 § 5 applicable in the instant case? If so, did the applicant have an enforceable right to compensation in respect of her deprivation of liberty, as required by Article 5 § 5 of the Convention?
2. Having regard to the Court’s finding that Article 6 was applicable, under its criminal limb, to the kind of proceedings which were also at issue in the present case (see Blokhin, cited above, §§ 179-182), was Article 6 § 2 of the Convention complied with, as regards the wording of the Regional Court’s decision of 7 June 2018 which referred to the “punishment” that the applicant had “served” (see Allen v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 25424/09, §§ 95-105, ECHR 2013)?
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