Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 133
August-September 2010
Iorgov v. Bulgaria (no. 2) - 36295/02
Judgment 2.9.2010 [Section V]
Article 3
Degrading treatment
Inhuman treatment
Torture
Sentence of life imprisonment with no possibility of commutation but not de jure and de facto irreducible: no violation
Facts – The applicant was sentenced to death for various crimes. However, following a moratorium on executions and the subsequent abolition of the death penalty, his sentence was replaced by one of life imprisonment without the possibility of commutation; he is currently serving that sentence.
Law – Article 3: The applicant, having been sentenced to life imprisonment without commutation, could not be released on licence under domestic law, since that measure was applicable only to prisoners serving fixed-term sentences. Nor could his sentence be commuted to a fixed-term sentence. Nevertheless, the possibility of an adjustment of his sentence, and of his eventual release, did exist in domestic law in the form of a pardon or commutation by the Vice-President. It followed that a life sentence without commutation was not an irreducible penalty de jure.
The granting of clemency by the Vice-President was a well-known remedy widely used by prisoners. The penalty of a life sentence without commutation had been introduced into the Criminal Code in December 1998, as a result of the abolition of the death penalty. However, in view of the date on which the moratorium on executions had been introduced pending the abolition of the death penalty and the time that had elapsed between the introduction of life sentences without commutation and the examination of the present case, it was unlikely that a large number of prisoners in this category would already have spent more than twenty years in detention. Under domestic law even an ordinary life sentence, which was considered a less severe penalty, could not be commuted by the courts until the offender had served twenty years in prison. Accordingly, the absence of any measures of clemency by November 2009 could not give rise to the conclusion that the Bulgarian system was not functional. An examination of practical situations as they unfolded in the future would be necessary to determine how applications for clemency by persons sentenced to life imprisonment without commutation were examined by the Vice-President and in what circumstances, if any, measures of clemency were granted. Since the Court was confined to reviewing the circumstances of the case, it could not accept the applicant’s claim that the system in question would not be effective. By the time the applicant had lodged his complaint in August 2002, he had served only thirteen years of his life sentence. Moreover, he had submitted an application for presidential clemency, which had been examined and rejected by the appropriate committee. Neither the legislation nor the authorities prevented him from submitting a new application to the Vice-President. The Court could not speculate as to whether he would one day be set free and, if so, after how many years; it was for the domestic authorities to make that decision in the light of the circumstances at the time they examined his application. Accordingly, it had not been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the applicant would never have his sentence reduced in practice. It had not been established that, as matters stood, the applicant was deprived of all hope of being released from prison one day.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
The Court also found no violation of Article 3 on account of the conditions of the applicant’s detention or the quality of the medical care he received in prison, and no violation of Article 5 § 4.
(See also Kafkaris v. Cyprus [GC], no. 21906/04, 12 February 2008, Information Note no. 105)
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This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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