Lhermitte v. Belgium [GC]

Information Note on the Court’s case-law 201

November 2016

Lhermitte v. Belgium [GC] - 34238/09

Judgment 29.11.2016 [GC]

Article 6

Criminal proceedings

Article 6-1

Fair hearing

Adequate procedural safeguards in place to enable accused to understand reasons for jury’s guilty verdict in assize court: no violation

Facts – The applicant was committed to stand trial for the murder of her five children. She was tried in 2008 by an Assize Court composed of three judges and a lay jury. Her defence counsel argued that at the time of the events she had been suffering from a mental disturbance making her incapable of controlling her actions. Having initially taken the opposite view, the psychiatric experts ultimately supported this opinion in the light of certain new items of evidence produced at the trial. The jury, however, answered “yes” to the questions of guilt and premeditation. On the same day, the Assize Court sentenced the applicant to life imprisonment. The Court of Cassation dismissed a subsequent appeal on points of law in which the applicant had complained of the lack of reasons given for the jury’s verdict and the sentencing judgment.

In a judgment of 26 May 2015 (see Information Note 185) a Chamber of the Court held that there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention, finding in particular that the combination of the questions to the jury, the Assize Court’s sentencing judgment and the Court of Cassation’s subsequent judgment had made it possible for the applicant to understand the reasons for her conviction.

On 14 September 2015 the case was referred to the Grand Chamber at the applicant’s request.

Law – Article 6 § 1: The case did not relate either to whether and how the impugned acts had been committed – both of which matters were established and had been admitted by the applicant – or to the legal characterisation of the offences or the severity of the sentence. The question arising was whether or not the applicant had been able to understand the reasons why the jury had found that she had been responsible for her actions at the material time, despite the fact that the psychiatric experts had changed their opinion at the end of the hearing. The Court answered this question in the affirmative, on the basis of the following observations and considerations.

(a) Adversarial nature of the proceedings – The following safeguards had been in place during the trial:

(i) at the start of the trial the indictment had been read out in full and the nature of the offence forming the basis of the charge and any circumstances that might aggravate or mitigate the sentence had likewise been indicated;

(ii) the case against the applicant had then been the subject of adversarial argument, each item of evidence being examined and the defendant, assisted by counsel, having the opportunity to call witnesses and respond to the testimony heard; and

(iii) the questions put by the president to the twelve members of the jury at the end of the ten-day hearing had been read out and the parties had been given a copy.

(b) Combined impact of the indictment and the questions to the jury – Firstly, counsel for the applicant had not raised any objections on learning of the president’s questions to the jury, seeking neither to amend them nor to propose others.

Furthermore, since the first question had concerned the applicant’s guilt, a positive answer necessarily implied that in the jury’s view, she had been responsible for her actions at the material time. The applicant could not therefore maintain that she had been unable to understand the jury’s position on this matter.

Admittedly, the jury had not provided any reasons for its finding in that regard. However, compliance with the requirements of a fair trial had to be assessed on the basis of the proceedings as a whole by examining whether, in the light of all the circumstances of the case, the procedure followed had made it possible for the accused to understand why he or she had been found guilty.

Such an examination in the present case revealed a number of factors that might have dispelled any doubts on the applicant’s part as to the jurors’ conviction that she had been criminally responsible at the time of the events:

(i) From its preliminary stage, the investigation had focused on the applicant’s psychological state at the time of the killings. The indictment, which had been some fifty pages long, had given an account of the precise sequence of events, the steps taken and evidence obtained during the investigation, and the forensic medical reports, but a substantial part of it had also discussed the applicant’s personal history and family life and the motives and reasons that had prompted her to carry out the killings, particularly in the light of the expert assessments of her psychological and mental state.

Admittedly, the indictment had been of limited effect in assisting an understanding of the verdict to be reached by the jury, since it had been filed before the trial hearing, the crucial part of proceedings in the Assize Court; Article 6 required an understanding not of the reasons that had prompted the judicial investigating bodies to send the case for trial in the Assize Court, but rather of the reasons that had persuaded the members of the jury, after attending the trial hearing, to reach their decision on the issue of guilt. Moreover, the Court could not speculate as to whether or not the findings of fact set out in the indictment had influenced the deliberations and the decision ultimately reached by the jury.

(ii) During the trial in the Assize Court, the question of the applicant’s criminal responsibility had been a central focus of the proceedings, since the emergence of new evidence had led the president to order a further psychiatric assessment, the conclusions of which had then been examined.

(iii) The sentencing judgment had explicitly mentioned both the applicant’s resolve to commit the murders and the cold-blooded manner in which she had carried them out. The conclusion as to her criminal responsibility had been logical in view of the jury’s answers to the questions. The Court of Cassation, moreover, had not interpreted the sentencing judgment in any other way, since it had held that consideration of the applicant’s cold-blooded manner and her determination to carry out her crimes had constituted the Assize Court’s reason for finding that she had been criminally responsible at the time of the events.

(c) Drafting of the sentencing judgment by professional judges who had not attended the deliberations on the issue of guilt – This factor could not call into question the value and impact of the explanations provided to the applicant, seeing that:

(i) the explanations had been provided without delay, at the end of the Assize Court session, since the sentencing judgment had been delivered on the day of the verdict;

(ii) although the judgment in question had been formally drafted by the professional judges, they had been able to obtain the observations of the twelve members of the jury, who had in fact sat alongside them in deliberating on the sentence and whose names appeared in the judgment; and

(iii) the professional judges had themselves been present throughout the trial hearing, and must therefore have been in a position to place the jurors’ observations in their proper context.

(d) Lack of specific explanations for the difference in opinion between the jury and the psychiatric experts on the issue of the applicant’s ability to control her actions at the time of the events –Admittedly, in their last report the three psychiatric experts had stated their unanimous opinion that the applicant had been “suffering at the time of the events from a severe mental disturbance making her incapable of controlling her actions”.

However, the Court had already found that statements made by psychiatric experts at an Assize Court trial formed only one part of the evidence submitted to the jury.

Moreover, the experts themselves had played down the impact of their findings by stating that their answers reflected their personal conviction while acknowledging that they were only ever “an informed opinion, and not an absolute scientific truth”.

Accordingly, the fact that the jury had not indicated the reasons that had prompted it to adopt a view at variance with the psychiatric experts’ final report in favour of the applicant had not been capable of preventing her from understanding the decision to find her criminally responsible.

***

In conclusion, the applicant had been afforded sufficient safeguards enabling her to understand the guilty verdict.

Conclusion: no violation (ten votes to seven).

(See Taxquet v. Belgium [GC], 926/05, 16 November 2010, Information Note 135; and Legillon v. France (53406/10) and Agnelet v. France (61198/08), judgments of 10 January 2013 summarised in Information Note 159; see also, in the series of case-law guides, the Guide on Article 6 (criminal limb))

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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

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