Latimer v. the United Kingdom (dec.)

Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 75

May 2005

Latimer v. the United Kingdom (dec.) - 12141/04

Decision 31.5.2005 [Section IV]

Article 6

Criminal proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Self-incriminating statements allegedly made while being detained in an environment deliberately designed to be coercive and to exert psychological pressure: inadmissible

The applicant, a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), was convicted in 1986, along with three others, of murder. He claims that he was convicted on the basis of admissions which he made when arrested on 29 November 1983, but from which he retracted the following day. Likewise, he complains that he only obtained access to his solicitor after seven days of detention at Castlereagh Holding Centre. The trial judge found that the confession statements had been made freely. The Court of Appeal rejected the appeals of the applicant and his co-defendants on three occasions. The last time in 2004, after the Criminal Cases Review Commission had referred the case back to the Court of Appeal on the basis of their concerns about a report on the applicant’s psychological vulnerability during detention and interrogation, and fresh evidence that witness A., who had given evidence stating that she had seen the applicant as a gunman, had a psychiatric history. The Court of Appeal considered that whilst more caution would have been necessary in accepting A.’s evidence, it still did not find that she had invented the whole incident. As to the applicant’s vulnerability, this was not supported by the applicant’s conduct during the interviews and trials. Finally, as to the denial of access to a solicitor during interrogation, the Court of Appeal observed that the Human Rights Act did not apply retrospectively to convictions before it came into force. Moreover, there was no mention in the custody records that the applicant had requested to see a solicitor.

Inadmissible under Article 6 § 1 and 6 § 3(c): The applicant had not submitted any evidence showing that he had been prevented from consulting a solicitor during his detention. As to the essence of his complaint that he had made the incriminating statements as a result of the coercive environment at Castlereagh, the Court found no reason to depart from the assessment of the Court of Appeal, which after examining the applicant’s confessions on three occasions in full adversarial proceedings, concluded that he was not of such vulnerability or had been subject to pressure during his detention, as to render unfair the reliance on the admissions. Consequently, notwithstanding the subsequent criticism made of the Castlereagh Holding Centre by the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, there was no indication the applicant had not received a fair trial: manifestly ill-founded.

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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