Communicated on 15 October 2020
Published on 2 November 2020
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 41103/10
Dmitriy Pavlovich DOVGIY and Andrey Leonidovich SAGURA
against Russia
lodged on 15 July 2010
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the conviction of the applicants, a former head of the Main Investigations Department of the Investigations Committee of the Russian Federation and a former head of the Investigations Committee of the Military Prosecutor’s Office of the Russian Federation, of bribery and abuse of office.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Taking into account the replacement of four jurors during the trial, and in particular the allegations of juror no. 10, was the Moscow City Court “an impartial tribunal” as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention (see Remli v. France, 23 April 1996, §§ 47-48, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996‑II, and Sutyagin v. Russia, no. 30024/02, §§ 178-93, 3 May 2011)? Given that the Supreme Court rejected the applicants’ request to question juror no. 10 or to enclose her written submissions into the case-file and did not give any reasons for the replacement of the other three jurors, did it check whether the trial court was “an impartial tribunal” as required by Article 6 § 1 of the Convention and use all the means at its power to dispel any doubts as to the reality and nature of the applicants’ allegations (compare Nikotin v. Russia [Committee], no. 80251/13, §§ 22-26, 8 January 2019, and Kabanov v. Russia [Committee], no. 17506/11, §§ 26-33, 28 May 2019)?
2. Did the applicants have a fair hearing in the determination of the criminal charges against them, in accordance with Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 (d) of the Convention? In particular, did the trial court’s refusal to question the “specialists” called by the applicants in the presence of the jury or to admit their “specialist” opinions into evidence examined by the jury, coupled with the admission as evidence of the expert reports obtained by the prosecution and the trial court’s refusal to appoint an additional expert examination, was there a disbalance between the defence and the prosecution in the area of collecting and adducing expert evidence (see Khodorkovskiy and Lebedev v. Russia, nos. 11082/06 and 13772/05, §§ 717-35, 25 July 2013)? Were the applicants able to formulate questions to the experts appointed by the prosecution at the investigation stage, challenge the experts or propose their own experts for inclusion in the team (compare Pichugin v. Russia [Committee], no. 38958/07, § 34, 6 June 2017)?
3. Did the secret surveillance measures involving audio and video recording violate the applicants’ right to respect for their private life under Article 8 of the Convention (see Bykov v. Russia [GC], no. 4378/02, §§ 72‑83, 10 March 2009, and Akhlyustin v. Russia, no. 21200/05, §§ 43-47, 7 November 2017)?
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