Print EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS
Kudla v. Poland
Application no. 30210/96
Decision 26 October 2000
(Excerpts)
II. RELEVANT DOMESTIC LAW AND PRACTICE
75. At the material time the rules governing detention on remand were contained in Chapter 24 of the Law of 19 April 1969 – Code of Criminal Procedure (Kodeks postępowania karnego) – entitled “Preventive measures” (Środki zapobiegawcze). The Code is no longer in force. It was repealed and replaced by the Law of 6 June 1997 (commonly referred to as the “New Code of Criminal Procedure”), which entered into force on 1 September 1998.
76. The Code listed as “preventive measures”, inter alia, detention on remand, bail and police supervision.
Article 209 set out the general grounds justifying imposition of the preventive measures. This provision read:
“Preventive measures may be imposed in order to ensure the proper conduct of proceedings if the evidence against the accused sufficiently justifies the opinion that he has committed a criminal offence.”
Article 217 § 1 defined grounds for detention on remand. The relevant part of this provision, in the version applicable until 1 January 1996, provided:
“1. Detention on remand may be imposed if:
(1) there is a reasonable risk that an accused will abscond or go into hiding, in particular when he has no fixed residence [in Poland] or his identity cannot be established; or
(2) there is a reasonable risk that an accused will attempt to induce witnesses to give false testimony or to obstruct the proper course of proceedings by any other unlawful means; or
(3) an accused has been charged with a serious offence or has relapsed into crime in the manner defined in the Criminal Code; or
(4) an accused has been charged with an offence which creates a serious danger to society.
...”
On 1 January 1996 sub-paragraphs 3 and 4 of Article 217 § 1 were repealed and the whole provision was redrafted. From that date onwards the relevant sub-paragraphs read:
“(1) there is a reasonable risk that an accused will abscond or go into hiding, in particular when his identity cannot be established or he has no permanent abode [in Poland]; or
(2) [as it stood before 1 January 1996].”
Paragraph 2 of Article 217 provided:
“If an accused has been charged with a serious offence or an intentional offence [for the commission of which he may be] liable to a sentence of a statutory maximum of at least eight years' imprisonment, or if a court of first instance has sentenced him to at least three years' imprisonment, the need to continue detention in order to secure the proper conduct of proceedings may be based upon the likelihood that a heavy penalty will be imposed.”
The Code set out the margin of discretion in maintaining a specific preventive measure. Articles 213 § 1, 218 and 225 of the Code were based on the precept that detention on remand was the most extreme preventive measure and that it should not be imposed if more lenient measures were adequate.
Article 213 § 1 provided:
“A preventive measure [including detention on remand] shall be immediately lifted or varied if the basis for it has ceased to exist or new circumstances have arisen which justify lifting a given measure or replacing it with a more or less severe one.”
Article 225 stated:
“Detention on remand shall be imposed only when it is mandatory; this measure shall not be imposed if bail or police supervision, or both of those measures, are considered adequate.”
The provisions for “mandatory detention” (for instance, detention pending an appeal against a sentence of imprisonment exceeding three years) were repealed on 1 January 1996 by the Law of 29 June 1995 on Amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure and Other Criminal Statutes.
Finally, Article 218 stipulated:
“If there are no special reasons to the contrary, detention on remand should be lifted, in particular, if:
(1) it may seriously jeopardise the life or health of the accused; or
(2) it would entail excessively burdensome effects for the accused or his family.”
77. Under Polish law “release on bail” does not mean release on condition that a detainee undertakes to pay a specified sum to the court if he fails to appear before it, but release on condition that the required security is paid to the court by either the detainee himself or sureties before the detainee is released.
78. Article 219 of the Code dealt with medical treatment of an accused during detention on remand. It provided the following:
“If the state of health of an accused requires treatment in a medical establishment, he cannot be further detained except in such an establishment.”
79. Article 214 of the Code of Criminal Procedure provided that an accused could at any time lodge an application for release. It read:
“An accused may at any time apply to have a preventive measure lifted or varied.
Such an application shall be decided by the prosecutor or, after the bill of indictment has been lodged, by the court competent to deal with the case, within a period not exceeding three days.”
80. Article 371 § 1 of the Code laid down a time-limit for preparing the statement of reasons for the judgment of the trial court where an appeal had been brought. The relevant provision read:
“The statement of the reasons for the judgment shall be prepared within seven days from the date on which a notice of appeal has been lodged; in a complex case, when it is impossible to prepare it within the prescribed time, the president of the court may extend that time for a specified period ...”
81. The Code set out two principal appellate remedies, called “appellate measures”: an appeal, which, under Articles 374 et seq., could be brought solely against judgments and an interlocutory appeal which, under Articles 409 et seq., could be brought against decisions other than judgments and against orders for preventive measures. There was (and still is) no specific provision expressly providing for remedies against inactivity on the part of the judiciary in the course of criminal proceedings.
THE LAW
I. ALLEGED VIOLATION OF ARTICLE 3 OF THE CONVENTION
82. The applicant claimed that he had not received adequate psychiatric treatment when in detention from 4 October 1993 onwards. He had been held at Cracow Remand Centre, where there had been no psychiatric ward and where no serious effort to treat his chronic depression had been made. In his submission, this had resulted in his repeated attempts to commit suicide in prison and constituted inhuman and degrading treatment within the meaning of Article 3 of the Convention, which provides:
“No one shall be subjected to torture or to inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.”
83. The applicant asserted that Article 219 of the Code of Criminal Procedure imposed an obligation on the authorities to at least consider whether his state of health was such as to require that he be placed in an appropriate medical establishment (see paragraph 78 above). Indeed, they had been well aware that he had suicidal tendencies, which had inevitably been aggravated by the extreme conditions of imprisonment. They had had before them abundant evidence to that effect because he had previously been released pending trial in view of the danger to his life posed by his continued detention.
84. From 4 October 1993 to 29 October 1996, that is to say for three years, he had again been detained on remand. During that time he had only once received treatment in a “medical establishment” within the meaning of Article 219. In March 1994, the court had placed him for several months in the psychiatric ward of Wrocław Prison Hospital. In the applicant's view, the court had done so only because his state had markedly deteriorated after his suicide attempt in January 1994.
85. The applicant further maintained that, after that short period of specialist treatment, he had again been transferred to Cracow Remand Centre where he had received no medication that could have prevented him from making further suicide attempts and where he had been detained in difficult prison conditions together with convicted criminals. This he had found psychologically unbearable, and on 23 January 1995 he had again attempted to commit suicide. He contended that the prison authorities had arbitrarily and groundlessly labelled the suicide attempt as being not genuine, but of an attention-seeking nature and they had reported the event to the court in that manner. They had not mentioned that a day later a psychiatrist had diagnosed his behaviour as a “situational depressive reaction”.
Despite that diagnosis, he added, the authorities had not done anything substantial to improve his condition or to provide him with adequate psychiatric assistance. Not only had the trial court failed to ensure continuous supervision of his health and of the conditions of his detention but it had taken no notice of the doctors' reports on his state either. In particular, he had been held in prison from 11 June to 29 October 1996 even though on the first of those dates the psychiatric expert had assessed his state as very serious and stated that his continued detention had been putting his life at risk. In sum, keeping him in detention regardless of the fact that it could have endangered his life and failing to give him adequate medical assistance amounted to treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention.
86. The Government disputed that – apart from the applicant's subjective feelings – the treatment complained of had attained the minimum level of severity required to fall within the scope of Article 3. They first of all maintained that in the light of the medical evidence produced by them before the Court, there could be no doubt that the relevant authorities had carefully and frequently monitored the applicant's state of health and provided him with medical assistance appropriate to his condition.
87. As to whether the authorities had fulfilled their obligation to place the applicant in an “appropriate medical establishment”, pursuant to Article 219 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, the Government pointed out that the medical records showed that he had been admitted to prison hospitals whenever it had proved necessary. Apart from the aforementioned observation in Wrocław, he had been placed in hospital after his second suicide attempt. That being so, no shortcomings on the part of the authorities could be found in that respect.
88. Nor could it be said, the Government added, that the courts had not checked whether the applicant had received proper medical assistance or had not made sure whether his condition had been compatible with continued detention. They had frequently asked the prison services about the applicant's health and, where necessary, inspected the findings of psychiatric examinations or even intervened with a view to improving the situation. For instance, the trial court had immediately reacted to the applicant's complaint about the psychiatric treatment received in prison (which he had made on 7 December 1994) and had asked the relevant prison services for an explanation. In addition, the court had on several occasions asked psychiatrists to prepare reports on the applicant's health.
89. In conclusion, the Government invited the Court to uphold the opinion expressed by the dissenting members of the Commission, who had considered that while it might well be argued that the authorities should have paid more attention to the applicant's psychiatric condition, they had nevertheless not exposed him to suffering of such severity as to constitute inhuman or degrading treatment.
90. As the Court has held on many occasions, Article 3 of the Convention enshrines one of the most fundamental values of democratic society. It prohibits in absolute terms torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, irrespective of the circumstances and the victim's behaviour (see, among many other authorities, V. v. the United Kingdom [GC], no. 24888/94, § 69, ECHR 1999-IX, and Labita v. Italy [GC], no. 26772/95, § 119, ECHR 2000-IV).
91. However, ill-treatment must attain a minimum level of severity if it is to fall within the scope of Article 3. The assessment of this minimum is, in the nature of things, relative; it depends on all the circumstances of the case, such as the nature and context of the treatment, the manner and method of its execution, its duration, its physical or mental effects and, in some instances, the sex, age and state of health of the victim (see, for example, the Raninen v. Finland judgment of 16 December 1997, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1997-VIII, pp. 2821-22, § 55).
92. The Court has considered treatment to be “inhuman” because, inter alia, it was premeditated, was applied for hours at a stretch and caused either actual bodily injury or intense physical or mental suffering. It has deemed treatment to be “degrading” because it was such as to arouse in the victims feelings of fear, anguish and inferiority capable of humiliating and debasing them. On the other hand, the Court has consistently stressed that the suffering and humiliation involved must in any event go beyond that inevitable element of suffering or humiliation connected with a given form of legitimate treatment or punishment (see, mutatis mutandis, the Tyrer v. the United Kingdom judgment of 25 April 1978, Series A no. 26, p. 15, § 30; the Soering v. the United Kingdom judgment of 7 July 1989, Series A no. 161, p. 39, § 100; and V. v. the United Kingdom cited above, § 71).
93. Measures depriving a person of his liberty may often involve such an element. Yet it cannot be said that the execution of detention on remand in itself raises an issue under Article 3 of the Convention. Nor can that Article be interpreted as laying down a general obligation to release a detainee on health grounds or to place him in a civil hospital to enable him to obtain a particular kind of medical treatment.
94. Nevertheless, under this provision the State must ensure that a person is detained in conditions which are compatible with respect for his human dignity, that the manner and method of the execution of the measure do not subject him to distress or hardship of an intensity exceeding the unavoidable level of suffering inherent in detention and that, given the practical demands of imprisonment, his health and well-being are adequately secured by, among other things, providing him with the requisite medical assistance (see, mutatis mutandis, the Aerts v. Belgium judgment of 30 July 1998, Reports 1998-V, p. 1966, §§ 64 et seq.).
95. The Court observes at the outset that in the present case it was not contested that both before and during his detention from 4 October 1993 to 29 October 1996 the applicant had suffered from chronic depression and that he had twice attempted to commit suicide in prison. His state had also been diagnosed as personality or neurotic disorder and situational depressive reaction (see paragraphs 58-67 and 69-72 above).
96. The Court further observes that the medical evidence which the Government produced to it (but not to the Commission) shows that during his detention the applicant regularly sought, and obtained, medical attention. He was examined by doctors of various specialisms and frequently received psychiatric assistance (see paragraphs 59-74 above). From the beginning of October to the end of December 1993 he had several times been examined by psychiatrists in prison (see paragraphs 59-61 above). At the end of 1993 the trial court obtained a report from a psychiatrist confirming that his state of health was at that time compatible with detention (see paragraph 21 above in fine).
Shortly after his 1994 suicide attempt, an event which in the light of the evidence before the Court does not appear to have resulted from or have been linked to any discernible shortcoming on the part of the authorities, the applicant was given specialist treatment in the form of psychiatric observation in Wrocław Prison Hospital from 9 March to 26 May 1994 (see paragraph 58 above). Later, after the observation in Wrocław, he also underwent two further follow-up examinations, on 9 November and 7 December 1994 (see paragraphs 66-67 above).
97. Admittedly, that did not prevent him from making another attempt to take his life in January 1995 (see paragraph 69 above). However, the Court, while it does not consider it necessary to express a view on whether that attempt was, as the authorities asserted, of an attention-seeking character or a manifestation of the suffering caused by his disorder, does not find on the material before it anything to show that they can be held responsible for what happened.
98. Similarly, the Court cannot discern any subsequent failure on their part to keep the applicant under psychiatric observation. On the contrary, it finds that from the beginning of 1995 to his release on 29 October 1996 the applicant was examined by a psychiatrist at least once a month. In 1996 alone, that is to say, before being released, he underwent twelve such examinations (see paragraphs 70-74 above).
99. The Court accepts that the very nature of the applicant's psychological condition made him more vulnerable than the average detainee and that his detention may have exacerbated to a certain extent his feelings of distress, anguish and fear. It also takes note of the fact that from 11 June to 29 October 1996 the applicant was kept in custody despite a psychiatric opinion that continuing detention could jeopardise his life because of a likelihood of attempted suicide (see paragraphs 46-50 above). However, on the basis of the evidence before it and assessing the relevant facts as a whole, the Court does not find it established that the applicant was subjected to ill-treatment that attained a sufficient level of severity to come within the scope of Article 3 of the Convention.
100. Accordingly, there has been no violation of that Article in the present case.
FOR THESE REASONS, THE COURT
1. Holds unanimously that there has been no violation of Article 3 of the Convention;