KRAMNÝ v. THE CZECH REPUBLIC

FIFTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 6772/25
Petr KRAMNÝ
against the Czech Republic

The European Court of Human Rights (Fifth Section), sitting on 10 July 2025 as a Committee composed of:

 María Elósegui, President,
 Kateřina Šimáčková,
 Gilberto Felici, judges,
and Martina Keller, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 6772/25) against the Czech Republic lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 20 February 2025 by a Czech national, Mr Petr Kramný (“the applicant”), who was born in 1978, and is currently detained in Karviná Prison;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1.  The case concerns the refusal of the domestic courts to reopen criminal proceedings against the applicant in which he had been found guilty of murder. The applicant relied on Articles 6, 13 and 18 of the Convention and Article 4 § 2 of Protocol No. 7.

2.  On 7 July 2022 the applicant lodged a request for the reopening of criminal proceedings in which he had been found guilty in 2016 of the murder of his daughter and wife three years earlier during a holiday in Egypt. He relied mainly on new expert reports from 2017 and 2018 assessing the victims’ cause of death. He also put forward new evidence to establish fundamental defects in the original proceedings, including (i) audio recordings of telephone calls which had allegedly been transcribed inaccurately; (ii) the data protection regulations of Ostrava Hospital, which had destroyed some of the evidence during the original proceedings; (iii) the subsequent revocation of authorisation for a key expert in the original proceedings to issue expert reports, and the criminal proceedings pending against that institution relating to allegations of unreliable reports; and (iv) the witness testimony of the Egyptian pathologist who had performed the post-mortem examination of the victims’ bodies.

3.  On 10 February 2023 the Ostrava Regional Court dismissed the applicant’s request. It held that the applicant had failed to meet the conditions for the reopening of the proceedings set out in Article 278 § 1 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, namely the submission of new information or evidence unknown to the courts in the original proceedings that could lead to a different assessment of the case. The court examined the audio recordings and the new expert reports during an oral hearing and held that they did not disclose any new information. It concluded that the expert reports merely expressed a different opinion on the facts from that put forward in the reports adduced in the original proceedings, without disclosing any new facts. Their conclusions were inconsistent and could not unequivocally refute the findings of the courts in the original proceedings as to the victims’ cause of death. The court dismissed the remaining items of evidence put forward, either because they had already been known to the courts in the original proceedings or because they were considered irrelevant.

4.  On 22 August 2023 the Olomouc High Court dismissed an appeal by the applicant against the Regional Court’s decision of 10 February 2023. It endorsed the conclusions of that decision as to the irrelevance of the new expert reports, as well as the refusal to admit any further evidence.

5.  The applicant lodged a constitutional appeal challenging the findings of the lower courts, and on 24 October 2024 the Constitutional Court dismissed it as manifestly ill-founded (decision no. II. ÚS 2830/23). The Constitutional Court reiterated that none of the evidence adduced by the applicant was capable of changing his initial conviction.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

6.  Relying on Articles 6 and 13 of the Convention, the applicant complained that Czech law did not effectively guarantee the presumption of innocence and that the courts examining his request for the reopening of the criminal proceedings against him had not had jurisdiction to review in full the original proceedings, not even to ensure the correction of fundamental defects.

7.  At the outset, the Court observes that the applicant’s guilt was established in criminal proceedings conducted in 2015 and 2016, in the course of which the courts had examined a number of items of evidence, including several expert reports. The first-instance judgment finding the applicant guilty of murder was upheld by the appellate court, and the remedies subsequently pursued by the applicant before the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court in 2018 were unsuccessful. The applicant did not lodge an application relating to those proceedings with the Court at the material time. It follows that the Court cannot examine the fairness of the proceedings during which the applicant’s guilt was established.

8.  The present application relates to the applicant’s request for the reopening of the criminal proceedings against him and the refusal of his request by the domestic courts on the grounds that no new information or evidence unknown to the courts in the original proceedings that could change the initial assessment of the case had been submitted.

9.  The Court reiterates in that connection that there is no right under the Convention to have terminated judicial proceedings reopened (see Moreira Ferreira v. Portugal (no. 2) [GC], no. 19867/12, § 60, 11 July 2017). The criminal limb of Article 6 relied on by the applicant is applicable only if the person is “charged with a criminal offence”. However, a person who has already been found guilty by a final judgment in a criminal case can no longer be regarded as “charged with an offence”. According to the Court’s well‑established case‑law, the Court is thus prevented from examining proceedings for the reopening of criminal proceedings (ibid., § 61, and see Franz Fischer v. Austria (dec.), no. 27569/02, ECHR 2003-VI).

10.  The Court may examine reopened proceedings only where a request for reopening would lead automatically to a full reconsideration of the case (see Moreira Ferreira, cited above, § 60). However, this was not so in the applicant’s case. Czech law provides for specific conditions under which criminal proceedings may be reopened (see paragraph 3 above), which the applicant failed to meet in the present case. Such an approach is not per se contrary to the Convention, in so far as it seeks to protect legal certainty. In that vein, the Court has held in the past that such a review should not be treated as an appeal in disguise and should be limited in scope to correcting judicial errors and miscarriages of justice. The mere possibility of there being different views on a subject is not a ground for re-examination (see, mutatis mutandis, Bujniţa v. Moldova, no. 36492/02, § 20, 16 January 2007).

11.  The Court finds no reason to depart from its long-standing practice in the present case. It therefore rejects the applicant’s complaint about the domestic courts’ refusal to reopen the criminal proceedings against him as falling outside the scope of Article 6 of the Convention.

12.  Accordingly, this complaint is incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4.

13.  Since the applicant did not raise an arguable claim under Article 6 of the Convention, it follows that his complaint under Article 13, which can only be applied in conjunction with other, substantive provisions of the Convention and the Protocols thereto, must be rejected for the same reasons, in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 (a) and 4 of the Convention.

B. Other alleged violations of the Convention

14.  As to the other complaints raised by the applicant under Article 18 of the Convention and Article 4 § 2 of Protocol No. 7, the Court considers that, in the light of all the material in its possession and in so far as the matters complained of are within its competence, these complaints do not disclose any appearance of a violation of the rights and freedoms enshrined in the Convention or the Protocols thereto.

15.  It follows that this part of the application must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4 of the Convention.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 11 September 2025.

 Martina Keller María Elósegui
 Deputy Registrar President