UK wins two Human Rights Court decisions

Two decisions by the European Court of Human Rights today have found in favour of the UK Government over convicted accused who challenged the fairness of the proceedings against them.

In one, the use of hearsay evidence in two separate cases was upheld as sufficient procedural safeguards were in place.

In the other, the admission in evidence of statements to police made without the benefit of legal advice was upheld because of the urgency of a terrorism investigation soon after the London bombings.

The hearsay cases, Horncastle and others v United Kingdom, concerned statements by witnesses, one of whom had died and the other of whom had disappeared through fear – brought on in part because of police warnings about the dangerous nature of the suspects. A seven judge chamber of the court held unanimously that in the case of the deceased witness, the evidence was not decisive of the outcome, and even if it was, there were sufficient counterbalancing factors in the relevant legislation to compensate for any difficulties caused to the defence by the admission of the statement. Regarding the witness who was afraid, the court accepted that all available steps had been taken to secure her attendance at trial, and as there was other strong incriminating evidence, her statement was not the sole or decisive basis of the convictions and it was not necessary to examine whether there were sufficient counterbalancing factors.

The terrorism cases, Ibrahim and others v United Kingdom, concerned a failed plot to bomb the London transport network on 21 July 2005. Three of the four applicants complained of the use of "safety interviews", conducted urgently for the purpose of protecting life and preventing serious damage to property, before which they were denied access to a lawyer; the fourth man argued he had been treated unfairly when interviewed as a witness, arguing that he should have been arrested and offered access to a lawyer when he began incriminating himself.

By six votes to one a chamber of the court ruled that no prejudice had been caused to the right to a fair trial of any of the four. The decision stated: "It has been convincingly established that at the time of the impugned police interviews there was an exceptionally serious and imminent threat to public safety, and that this threat provided compelling reasons which justified the temporary delay of all four applicants' access to lawyers."

Again the court decided that there was a strong case against each applicant. It added in the case of the first three: "It would not have struck the correct balance between the applicants’ article 6 right and the general interest in their prosecution if, when faced with [a] hoax defence, the prosecution had been unable to rely on statements from the applicants that not only undermined that defence but flatly contradicted it."