Information Note on the Court’s case-law No.

March 1996

Doorson v. the Netherlands - 20524/92

Judgment 26.3.1996

Article 6

Article 6-3-d

Examination of witnesses

Obtain attendance of witnesses

Reliance on the evidence of anonymous witnesses, on an incriminating statement made to the police by a named witness but retracted in open court and on a statement made during the police investigation by a named witness whom the defence had no opportunity to question; refusal by the trial court to hear a defence expert while agreeing to hear an expert proposed by the prosecution: no violation

[This summary is extracted from the Court’s official reports (Series A or Reports of Judgments and Decisions). Its formatting and structure may therefore differ from the Case-Law Information Note summaries.]

I. SCOPE OF THE CASE BEFORE THE COURT

Complaints not raised as such in the proceedings before the Commission and not encompassed by the Commission's decision on admissibility — these go beyond mere legal submissions put forward in support of the complaints declared admissible — Court has no jurisdiction to entertain them.

Allegation that case was not decided by an "impartial tribunal" — issue not referred to in the proceedings before the Court — no reason for Court to address the matter of its own motion.

II. ARTICLE 6 § 1 TAKEN TOGETHER WITH ARTICLE 6 § 3 (d) OF THE CONVENTION

1. The Court's general approach

Principles following from Court's case-law reiterated.

2. The anonymous witnesses Y.15 and Y.16

No issue arises as regards fact that an investigating judge had heard the anonymous witnesses in the absence of counsel in the course of the preliminary judicial investigation, since in the course of the subsequent appeal proceedings these two witnesses were heard in counsel's presence.

Use by the trial court of statements of anonymous witnesses to found a conviction not under all circumstances incompatible with the Convention — principles of fair trial require that in appropriate cases the interests of the defence are balanced against those of witnesses or victims called upon to testify.

In the circumstances, sufficient reason for maintaining anonymity of witnesses concerned — Convention does not preclude identification (for the purposes of Article 6 § 3 (d)) of an accused with his counsel — in the circumstances, the handicaps under which the defence laboured were sufficiently counterbalanced by the procedures followed by the judicial authorities — even so, a conviction should not be based either solely or to a decisive extent on anonymous statements — that, however, was not the case here.

Evidence obtained from witnesses under conditions in which the rights of the defence cannot be secured to the extent normally required by the Convention to be treated with extreme care — Court satisfied that that was done in the instant case.

3. The witness N.

Court cannot hold in the abstract that evidence given by a witness in open court and on oath should always be relied on in preference to other statements made by the same witness in the course of criminal proceedings, not even when the two are in conflict.

4. The witness R.

Despite the Court of Appeal's efforts it had proved impossible to secure R.'s attendance at the hearing — in the circumstances it had been open to the Court of Appeal to have regard to the statement obtained by the police, especially since it could consider that statement to be corroborated by other evidence before it.

5. The defence expert K. and the prosecution witness I.

In the circumstances the Court of Appeal could consider that the evidence offered by K. would not have contributed to the assessment which the Court of Appeal was required to make, especially since in any case a similar statement had already been made by another expert, and it had been open to the Court of Appeal to draw from I.'s evidence the inferences which it did.

Conclusion: no violation (seven votes to two).

© Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights
This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.

Click here for the Case-Law Information Notes