GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 11 42. Firstly, in so far as the applicant complained of the failure of the criminal courts to discontinue the proceedings against him, the court found that he had not sufficiently substantiated his complaint. It observed that the Regional Court had already stated that the police’s threat to inflict pain on the applicant had violated Article 136a of the Code of Criminal Procedure and Article 3 of the Convention and that the applicant’s rights under Article 1 § 1 and Article 104 § 1, second sentence, of the Basic Law had been disregarded. 43. However, the violation of fundamental rights outside the trial did not necessarily warrant the conclusion that the judgment delivered by a criminal court, which was based on the findings made during the trial, breached constitutional law. In the present case, the criminal courts had found that the methods of investigation used by the police had been prohibited, but had differed from the applicant as to the legal consequences that flowed from that finding. They had taken the view that the statements obtained as a result of the measures in question could not be used but that there was no bar to the specific criminal proceedings being pursued. 44. According to the Federal Constitutional Court, the procedural flaw of having used prohibited investigation measures could be regarded as having been remedied by the criminal courts, because they had prohibited the admission of the statements obtained thereby. Such a prohibition was prescribed by Article 136a § 3 of the Code of Criminal Procedure in order to compensate for a prior infringement of the rights of the person concerned. However, the circumstances in which substantial procedural irregularities might entail a bar to criminal proceedings were not laid down in law. In these circumstances, the applicant had failed to explain why the contested methods of investigation had not only required a prohibition on using the statements obtained thereby as evidence, but should also lead to a bar to criminal proceedings against him. 45. Secondly, the Federal Constitutional Court found that, in so far as the applicant complained that the Regional Court had refused to exclude the use in the proceedings of all items of evidence obtained as a result of the confession extracted under duress, his constitutional complaint was likewise inadmissible. It held that the applicant had failed to raise this issue in the proceedings before the Federal Court of Justice. 46. The decision was served on the applicant’s lawyer on 22 December 2004. C. Subsequent events 1. The criminal proceedings against the police officers 47. On 20 December 2004 the Frankfurt am Main Regional Court delivered judgments against the deputy chief of the Frankfurt police, D., and