C O M P A R AT I V E S T U D Y he had started his car-dealing enterprise back in 1990. He also challenged the reliability of S.Š. as a witness on the ground of his mental illness.”607 Further, the Court analysed the reasoning of the judgment and stated that national courts made no comments on any mentioned discrepancies or on the contradictory witness statements: “Against the above background, the Court finds that in the present case the decisions reached by the domestic courts were not adequately reasoned. Thus, obvious discrepancies in the statements of witnesses as well as the medical condition of S.Š. were not at all or not sufficiently addressed. In such circumstances, it can be said that the decisions of the national courts did not observe the basic requirement of criminal justice that the prosecution has to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt and were not in accordance with one of the fundamental principles of criminal law, namely, in dubio pro reo.”608 When it comes to the errors during the deciding about facts or in the implementation of the laws, it is the view of the Court that this is not its duty unless such errors led to infringement of the rights protected by the Convention. As an example, in the Hajnal609 the Court found violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention because in the criminal proceedings evidence was used which was obtained contrary to Article 3. “The Court stands by the opinion that admission of statements which were obtained through torture or other ill-treatment, and which serve as evidence to establish relevant facts in criminal proceedings, makes the whole proceeding unfair. This finding applies irrespective of the probative value of the statements and irrespective of whether their use was adjudicating for conviction.”610 And vice-versa, in Schenk611 the Court stated that although the admission of unlawfully obtained evidence does not in itself violate Article 6, it can give rise to unfairness on the facts. In this case, which pertained to a use of a recording which was illegal in so far as it was not ordered by the investigating judge, the Court held that there was no violation of Article 6 (1) because the defence was able to challenge the use of the recording and there was other evidence supporting the conviction of the accused. As it can be seen from the paragraph above the right to defence is one of the basic requirements for the right to fair procedure. Below are elaborated few cases where the Court found that the right to a fair procedure was violated due to the infringement of the right to an adequate defence. Ibid, §46. Ibid, §51. 609 Hajnal v. Serbia, no.36937/06, ECHR, 19.06.2012. 610 Ibid, § 113. 611 Schenk v.Switzerland, no.10862/84, ECHR, 12.07.1988. 607 608 131

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