Published on 4 April 2022
FOURTH SECTION
Application no. 15199/20
George Angel HENRIQUEZ
against the Netherlands
lodged on 12 March 2020
communicated on 17 March 2022
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the alleged lack of any genuine prospect of the applicant’s release from his life-imprisonment sentence. That sentence was imposed on the applicant by a first-instance court in 2016. On 4 December 2017 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal imposed the same sentence after having found the applicant guilty of two murders, fraud and attempted fraud. In its reasoning on the imposition of the penalty, the Court of Appeal referred to its earlier judgments of 29 June 2017 in a number of different cases in which it had concluded that Dutch law now provided for a review mechanism which was compatible with the standards developed in the Court’s case-law and on the basis of which life sentences could, in appropriate cases, be reduced, thus that the imposition of such a sentence was not in itself contrary to Article 3 of the Convention. It saw no reason to reach a different conclusion in the present case.
The applicant’s life sentence became final by judgment of the Supreme Court of 1 October 2019.
The applicant, in essence, alleges that current Dutch legislation and practice still do not meet the Convention standards, making his life sentence de jure and de facto irreducible, contrary to Article 3 of the Convention.
QUESTIONS TO THE PARTIES
1. Is the applicant’s life sentence compatible with Article 3 of the Convention? In particular, do the criteria and conditions for review laid down in domestic law have a sufficient degree of clarity and certainty, enabling the applicant to know, at the outset of his sentence, what he must do to be considered for release, and under what conditions a review of his sentence will take place (see Vinter and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], nos. 66069/09 and 2 others, ECHR 2013, §§ 119-122; Murray v. the Netherlands [GC], no. 10511/10, §§ 99-104, 26 April 2016; and Hutchinson v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 57592/08, §§ 42-45, 17 January 2017)?
2. The Government are requested (1) to indicate how the practice of the review of life sentences has developed since the entry into force of the Decree Advisory Committee Life‑Sentenced Prisoners, and (2) to provide an overview of recent domestic case-law regarding that practice.