Information Note on the Court’s case-law 25
December 2000
Zoon v. the Netherlands - 29202/95
Judgment 7.12.2000 [Section IV]
Article 6
Article 6-3-b
Adequate time
Availability of sufficiently detailed written judgment within period for lodging an appeal: no violation
Facts: The applicant, a doctor, was convicted of committing euthanasia. The judgment was read out in the presence of the applicant's lawyer, but it is disputed whether the grounds or only the operative parts were read out. The Government state that an abridged version was available at the time of delivery and the practice at the time was for the court to provide a copy if a written request was made. The applicant, who did not appeal, maintains that his lawyer telephone the court within the 14-day time-limit for lodging an appeal and was told that no written judgment was available. The abridged copy did not include the evidence on which the conviction was based; the practice was to prepare a full written judgment only in the event of an appeal being made.
Law: Article 6 § 1 and § 3 (b) – It is not contested that the operative parts of the judgment were read out in the presence of the applicant's lawyer and, whether or not the lawyer knew of the policy of making a copy of the abridged judgment available if a request was made in writing, it is not disputed that the abridged judgment was available within 48 hours of delivery. It was thus possible for the applicant and his lawyer to take cognisance of the text well before expiry of the time-limit for lodging an appeal. The applicant's defences, which were of a legal nature, were addressed in the abridged judgment and although the items of evidence on which his conviction was based were not listed in it, he never denied having committed the acts or challenged the evidence as such. Since in Dutch law an appeal is directed against the charge rather than against the first instance judgment, an appeal involves a completely new establishment of the facts and a reassessment of the law, so that the applicant and his lawyer would have been able to make an informed assessment of the possible outcome of any appeal in the light of the abridged judgment and the evidence in the case-file. It cannot be said, therefore, that the applicant’s defence rights were unduly affected by the absence of a complete judgment or by the absence from the abridged judgment of a detailed enumeration of the items of evidence on which his conviction was based.
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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