Information Note on the Court’s case-law No. 79
October 2005
Shannon v. the United Kingdom - 6563/03
Judgment 4.10.2005 [Section IV]
Article 6
Criminal proceedings
Article 6-1
Fair hearing
Self-incrimination: requirement to attend an interview and answer questions by financial investigators which could have been used in an incriminating way in criminal proceedings: violation
Facts: The applicant, who was charged by the police with false accounting and conspiracy to defraud, was required to attend before a financial investigator to answer questions on whether any person had benefited from the false accounting. The applicant did not attend the interview because he feared his replies could be used as evidence against him in the trial, and as he had allegedly not obtained satisfactory guarantees from the investigators to the contrary. The applicant was as a result convicted and fined for the offence of failing without reasonable excuse to comply with the financial investigator’s requirements to answer questions. His appeal against conviction was initially allowed by the County Court, which found that the applicant had a right not to answer questions that would have tended to incriminate him. However, the Court of Appeal confirmed the applicant’s conviction on the ground of not having a reasonable excuse for refusing to comply with the investigators’ requirements merely because the information sought could be potentially incriminating. In the meantime, the criminal proceedings against the applicant for false accounting and conspiracy to defraud were struck out.
Law: Article 6(1) – Although the underlying proceedings in the present case were not pursued, there was no requirement that allegedly incriminating evidence obtained by coercion actually be used in substantive proceedings before the right not to incriminate oneself applied (see Heaney and McGuiness v. Ireland and Funke v. France). In fact, under the Court’s case-law, there was no need for proceedings even to be brought for the right not to incriminate oneself to be at issue, and it was thus open to the applicant to complain of an interference with his right not to incriminate himself. The present case was to be distinguished from Heaney and McGuinness, where the requirement to attend an interview was on a person in respect of whom there was no suspicion and no intention to bring proceedings. However, in assessing the use of coercive measures in the present case, it had to be taken into account that the applicant had already been charged with a crime, and in such circumstances, attending the interview would have involved a real likelihood of being required to give information on matters which could subsequently arise in the criminal proceedings for which he had been charged. As to procedural protection available to the applicant if he had attended the interview and wished to prevent the use of information in criminal proceedings, it would have been open to the investigators to forward information to the police. Moreover, had the information obtained from the applicant at the interview been used at a subsequent trial, this would have deprived the applicant of the right to determine what evidence he wished to put before the trial court, and could have amounted to “resorting to evidence obtained through methods of coercion or oppression in defiance of the will of the accused”. In conclusion, the requirement for the applicant to attend an interview with financial investigators and to be compelled to answer questions in respect of events of which he had been charged was not compatible with his right not to incriminate himself.
Conclusion: violation (unanimously).
© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.
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