CEDH · CASELAW;CLIN;ENG — 12 juin 2025

.s3ABFC313 { font-size:10pt } .sD4B5322E { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; text-align:justify } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .sA241FE93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:18pt; text-align:justify; page-break-after:avoid; border-bottom:0.75pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .s2EF62ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:12pt } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .s8F2B0B1B { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt; page-break-after:avoid; font-size:12pt } .s65B66A85 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:12pt } .s97EB40D9 { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:14pt; page-break-after:avoid } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .s5F48796F { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:justify } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .s8B6C6D43 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; border-bottom:1pt solid #000000; padding-bottom:1pt } .sDF790F1E { margin-top:12pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } Legal summary June 2025 Krpelík v. the Czech Republic - 23963/21 Judgment 12.6.2025 [Section V] Article 6 Article 6-1 Fair hearing Article 6-3-c Defence through legal assistance Criminal conviction of an intellectually disabled person based on his pre-trial statements made in the absence of a lawyer and interpreted as a waiver of his right to be represented: violation Facts – On 19   May 2016 the police arrested the applicant following several burglaries and questioned him as a suspect. On 20   May 2016 the police and the applicant undertook a site visit to the location of the burglaries and the applicant provided various details about his actions. On the same day he was questioned as a charged person. The applicant, who showed several signs of intellectual difficulties, was not represented by a lawyer during the pre-trial stage. He was only informed of his procedural rights by means of a pre-printed form that he signed after each questioning and the site visit. On 22   May 2016, after the court had issued a detention order, the applicant waived his right to appeal and asked   for a court-appointed lawyer, which was granted. The applicant was found guilty and sentenced to prison. His appeals were dismissed despite counsel‘s argument that given his intellectual disability, his pre-trial confession made without a lawyer being present should not have been admitted as evidence of his guilt. Law – Article   6 §   3 (c) in conjunction with Article   6 §   1: Given the vulnerability of the applicant as a result of his intellectual disabilities and the imbalance of power arising by the very nature of criminal proceedings, a waiver by him of an important right under Article   6 could only be accepted if it had been expressed unequivocally and after the authorities had taken all reasonable steps to ensure that he had been fully aware of his rights and could appreciate, as far as possible, the consequences of his conduct. All information about the applicant’s procedural rights had been provided to him only on the first pages of the pre-printed forms on which his pre-trial statements had been recorded. The relevant text would be challenging to understand even for persons of full intellectual capacities and had been rendered even more complex by the inclusion of references to various legal provisions which had applied depending on the applicant’s status in the course of the proceedings. Given the circumstances of the present case, in which the applicant had been suffering from a certain level of intellectual disability and had been questioned without any legal or other assistance, it was unlikely that advice merely in the form of domestic-law terms would have been enough to enable him to sufficiently comprehend the nature of his rights and to exercise them effectively. Consequently, the applicant had not been made fully aware that he had been entitled to legal representation before making any statement to the police. Moreover, given the lack of assistance by a lawyer or any other person, it was also unlikely that he could have reasonably appreciated the consequences of being questioned without the assistance of a lawyer, including the fact that this could be interpreted as a waiver of his rights. Being conscious of the applicant’s difficulties, the authorities should have actively ensured, in any appropriate way, that he understood his rights, for example by providing an easy-to-read version of the relevant information or by providing an intermediary to facilitate communication and make the information accessible to him. The Court could not but conclude that his waiver of the right to legal representation had not been attended by minimum safeguards commensurate with its importance. His right to legal assistance had therefore been improperly restricted on 19 and 20   May 2016 when he had been questioned in the absence of a lawyer and had made his confessions. There had been no compelling reasons for such a restriction. The Court therefore went on to examine the consequences which the lack of a defence lawyer on those dates had had for the overall fairness of the criminal proceedings. While the domestic courts had assessed the applicant’s capacity to stand trial and to represent himself effectively, they had failed to assess his capacity to make a valid waiver of his right to legal assistance. The first-instance court had emphasised that the applicant had repeated his confession also at the detention hearing of 11   August 2016 where his lawyer had been present. Nevertheless, at that hearing the applicant had limited himself to declaring that he had already made a statement to the police which he did not want to change. On the other hand, he had repeatedly stated before the trial court that he had not done anything wrong. The Court therefore found that although the applicant had had the benefit of adversarial proceedings in which he had been represented by a court-appointed lawyer, the detriment he had suffered at the pre-trial stage had not been remedied in those proceedings, where his confession had been held to be admissible as evidence. Against that background, the Court found that the circumstances surrounding the applicant’s alleged waiver of his right to legal assistance at the pre-trial stage, the insufficient scrutiny of that waiver by the courts and the failure to cure that flaw by any other procedural safeguards, coupled with the use by the trial court of the applicant’s pre-trial statements to convict him, had rendered the trial as a whole unfair. Conclusion : violation (unanimously). Article   41: EUR 3,000 in respect of non-pecuniary damage. While the applicant could still request a reopening of the proceedings, he must have suffered non-pecuniary damage in the form of distress and frustration, which called for compensation. (See Ibrahim and Others v.   the United Kingdom [GC], 50541/08 et al., 13   September 2016, Legal Summary ; A.-   M.V.   v.   Finland , 53251/13, 23   March 2017, Legal Summary ; Beuze v.   Belgium [GC], 71409/10, 9   November 2018, Legal Summary ; Bogdan v.   Ukraine , 3016/16, 8   February 2024, Legal Summary )   © Council of Europe/European Court of Human Rights This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court. To access legal summaries in English or French click here . For non-official translations into other languages click here .