Information Note on the Court’s case-law 6
May 1999
Ledonne v. Italy (no. 1) - 35742/97
Judgment 12.5.1999 [Section II]
Article 6
Criminal proceedings
Article 6-1
Reasonable time
Length of criminal proceedings: violation
The case concerned the length of criminal proceedings against the applicant (more than 5 years 5 months for one degree of jurisdiction).
Law: The Court considered that the case was not complex. It noted that the applicant's conduct had contributed to a certain extent to slowing down the proceedings, but recalled that Article 6 does not require accused persons actively to co-operate with the judicial authorities and that they cannot be reproached for making full use of the remedies available under domestic law. However, such conduct constitutes an objective fact, not capable of being attributed to the respondent State. In this case, even if the applicant could be considered to be responsible for some of the delays, this could not justify the length of the periods in between individual hearings and certainly not the total duration of the proceedings. The Court identified two periods of inactivity totalling more than two years and ten months imputable to the State’s authorities and found that the Government had not provided any convincing explanation for these delays. It concluded that the period of more than five years and five months taken to consider the case fails to satisfy the "reasonable time" requirement.
Conclusion: violation (5 votes to 2).
Article 41: The Court awarded the applicant 15,000,000 ITL as compensation for non-pecuniary damage but rejected his claims in respect of costs and expenses, noting that he had not submitted details of any costs incurred.
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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