Information Note on the Court’s case-law 186
June 2015
Schmid-Laffer v. Switzerland - 41269/08
Judgment 16.6.2015 [Section II]
Article 6
Criminal proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Failure to inform person interviewed as a witness, but later convicted, of her right to remain silent: no violation
Facts – In 2001 the applicant’s husband, from whom she was in the process of divorcing, was murdered by the man with whom she was in a relationship. The next day she was interviewed as a witness without being taken into custody. At no point did the interviewing officer inform her of her right to remain silent. He incidentally asked her whether she had ever envisaged resolving marital problems by violent means. She then recounted in detail all she had done during the day of the murder. She also admitted that, with her lover, as a joke, she had envisaged the idea of acting violently towards her husband and that she had participated in the ploy to draw him to the scene of the crime. She was arrested about three weeks later and interviewed once again. She confessed to having incited her companion to murder her husband. Her confessions were reiterated over the following days. A number of confrontations with her companion were held in the presence of her lawyer. She retracted her confessions and subsequently continued to deny her involvement. She was sentenced to seven and a half years’ imprisonment on the basis, in particular, of her statements, those of her companion and the testimony of other people, including her partner’s brother and his wife, the applicant’s father and a colleague of the latter.
Before the European Court, the applicant complained that she had not been informed at her first interview of her right to remain silent.
Law – Article 6 § 1
(a) Admissibility – The manner in which the applicant’s interview was conducted at the police station, in particular the question whether she had ever envisaged violence against her husband, was such as to affect her position in the subsequent proceedings. It followed that the applicant could rely on the safeguards of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention already at that stage of the proceedings.
(b) Merits – The applicant’s first police interview was, as such, capable of undermining the fairness of the subsequent criminal proceedings. The police had a duty to inform her of her rights not to incriminate herself and to remain silent. However, that interview had been of little importance among the other evidence. Her conviction had been based in particular on her companion’s statements, which had been considered credible by the domestic courts. Those statements were corroborated by the statements of a number of others. In other words, the conviction had not been decided on the sole basis of the information obtained during the interview at issue. Moreover, the applicant, who was duly represented by a lawyer before the domestic courts and before the Court, had failed to state exactly which statements made at that point had subsequently been relied on by the Swiss courts in convicting her. It could be observed, lastly, that the applicant had not incriminated herself on that occasion and that she had remained at liberty. Consequently, the proceedings against the applicant had not been unfair as a whole.
Conclusion: no violation (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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