Information Note on the Court’s case-law 185
May 2015
Lhermitte v. Belgium - 34238/09
Judgment 26.5.2015 [Section II]
Article 6
Criminal proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Alleged lack of adequate procedural safeguards to enable accused to understand reasons for jury’s guilty verdict in assize court: no violation
[This case was referred to the Grand Chamber on 14 September 2015]
Facts – In 2008 the applicant was indicted for the premeditated murder of her five children. Her trial took place in the Assize Court. She did not dispute the facts but argued that she had been incapable of controlling her actions. In response to five questions, a jury found the applicant guilty, and the Assize Court, composed of three judges and the jury, endorsed the guilty verdict and sentenced her to life imprisonment. The Court of Cassation dismissed the applicant’s appeal.
The applicant complained before the European Court that the jury’s guilty verdict had lacked reasoning.
Law – Article 6 § 1: Since the applicant had not disputed the veracity of the charges, the difficulty in the proceedings had related to the determination of her criminal liability. The indictment was of limited significance, as it predated the trial itself. As regards the findings indicated in the indictment and their potential usefulness for an understanding of the guilty verdict, the Court could not speculate as to whether or not they had influenced the jury’s deliberation or the judgment ultimately handed down by the Assize Court.
As to the five questions put to the jury, four of them had concerned the murders and the aggravating factor of premeditation. The last question had concerned the applicant’s criminal liability. The questions in themselves had perhaps not enabled the applicant to understand the evidence against her, among everything that had been discussed during the trial, that had ultimately been taken into account in the jury’s conclusion that she was criminally liable for her actions. However, it was necessary to look at the proceedings as a whole, including the subsequent court decisions which clarified the reasons for the jury’s guilty verdict. Thus the Assize Court, composed of three professional judges and the jury, had stated in its sentencing judgment that the defence relied upon by the applicant, in particular her “mental fragility, depressive state and character”, could not explain the acts she had committed and did not even constitute mitigating factors. The Court of Cassation, for its part, had expressly indicated the reasons why the Assize Court had found that the applicant had not been incapable of controlling her actions at the material time. A combined reading of the judgments of the Assize Court and of the Court of Cassation should have enabled the applicant to understand the reasons why the jury had rejected her defence arguments, based on her alleged lack of responsibility at the time of the murders, and had found her, on the contrary, to have been capable of controlling her actions.
The jury alone had decided that the applicant was responsible for her actions, although the reasoning for that verdict had been provided subsequently in the sentencing judgment of the Assize Court, composed of the jurors and three professional judges, and had also been explained by the Court of Cassation. The judges in the Assize Court had thus contributed to drafting reasoning which partly concerned a deliberation at which they had not been present. However, the reasoning given was not thus invalidated, remaining compatible with the right to a fair trial. As the judges had joined the jurors in deliberating on the sentence and on the reasoning therefor, they could have ascertained directly from the jurors the grounds on which they had found the applicant guilty, and together they must have agreed on reasons which, of course, had to be in line with the reasons underlying the verdict. The fact that the Court of Cassation had subsequently explained how the sentencing judgment was to be understood in the light of the guilty verdict could not be criticised. In a system where certain decisions were appealable, the decision of the lower court would understandably have to be construed according to the meaning attributed to it, if appropriate, by the higher court.
Moreover, specifically with regard to the determination of the sentence, the Assize Court judgment had been duly reasoned and did not appear arbitrary. Consequently, the applicant had enjoyed sufficient safeguards allowing her to understand the decisions as to her guilt and her sentence.
Conclusion: no violation (four votes to three).
(See also Taxquet v. Belgium [GC], 926/05, 16 November 2010, Information Note 135; and Legillon v. France (53406/10) and Agnelet v. France (61198/08), 10 January 2013, both summarised in Information Note 159)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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