Doubt in Favour of the Defendant, Guilty Beyond Reasonable Doubt supposes that the prosecution in a criminal case seek to prove their case against the accused without resort to evidence obtained through methods of coercion or oppression in defiance of the will of the accused. In this sense the right is closely linked to the presumption of innocence contained in Article 6 § 2 of the Convention. The right not to incriminate oneself is primarily concerned, however, with respecting the will of an accused person to remain silent. As commonly understood in the legal systems of the Contracting Parties to the Convention and elsewhere, it does not extend to the use in criminal proceedings of material which may be obtained from the accused through the use of compulsory powers but which has an existence independent of the will of the suspect such as, inter alia, documents acquired pursuant to a warrant; breath, blood and urine samples; and bodily tissue for the purpose of DNA testing”. In the case of Ajdarić606, the Court found the Croatia in violation of the principle in dubio pro reo because of the lack of court reasoning, which constituted a violation of Article 6 paragraph 1 of the ECHR. In this case, the applicant was convicted on three counts of murder perpetrated in Kutina in 1998, and sentenced to 40 years in prison, solely on the basis of hearsay evidence of a witness. The witness was a former police officer and was himself convicted (judgement not final) to 7 years in prison; the applicant met the witness in the prison hospital in 2005. The witness said that he had overheard conversations between the applicant and a third person while staying in the same hospital room with five other inmates, in which they had discussed perpetrating the criminal offence together. The ECtHR found that the national courts made no effort to verify the statements made by this witness, but accepted them as truthful, irrespective of the fact that medical documentation showed that he suffered from mental disorders; also, the national courts did not take into account contradictory statements made by other witnesses either. The Court went far in exploring contradictions between different statements, contradictions in statements themselves, and inconsistencies in some issues, and has stated: “All these discrepancies called for an increasingly careful assessment by the domestic courts. In this connection the Court points out to the requirement that the parties in the proceedings have to be heard and their objections properly addressed and notes that the applicant made serious objections as to the reliability of evidence given by S.Š., pointing out to various discrepancies and lack of logic in the statement of S.Š., as well as to the lack of any connection between him and the criminal offences at issue. The applicant referred to specific facts and documents which called into question the statement given by S.Š. Thus, he pointed to the confused and imprecise nature of the statements by S.Š. As to the allegation by S.Š. that the applicant had opened a “business” in Banja Luka with the money taken from the victims in 1998, the applicant presented documents showing that 606 130 Ajdarić v. Croatia, no. 20883/09, ECHR, 04.06.2012.

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