GÄFGEN v. GERMANY JUDGMENT 43 point out its precise whereabouts. He had been obliged to walk, without shoes, through woods to the place where he had hidden J.’s corpse. The fact that his directions as to where he had hidden the corpse and its consequent discovery had been recorded on videotape demonstrated that the events at Birstein had not been about the child’s rescue but about the recovery of evidence in a manner aimed at securing his conviction. 151. The applicant argued that the impugned real evidence had been decisive in, and not merely accessory to, securing his conviction. Though other charges would have been possible, the self-incriminating evidence obtained as a result of his extracted confession was wholly necessary for the charge of and conviction for murder. There had been no other hypothetical clean path which would have led the police to this evidence at the relevant time. Whether they would ever have found it was a matter of pure speculation. 152. As the trial court at the outset of the trial had rejected his application to exclude the evidence obtained in violation of Article 3, the outcome of the trial had, at that point, effectively, been determined. Every possible defence strategy, such as relying on the right to remain silent or alleging that J. had been killed accidentally or volunteering at an early stage a full confession in the hope of mitigation of sentence, had become ineffective. He had partially confessed on the second day of the trial and had only admitted to having killed J. intentionally at the end of the trial after all the impugned items of evidence which he had sought to have excluded had been adduced. Indeed, even the prosecution and the accessory prosecutors, in opposing any possibility of mitigation of sentence, had pointed out that he had only confessed to what had already been proven. 153. The applicant further submitted that, regardless of whether the method of interrogation was to be classified as torture or as inhuman treatment, the Convention (he referred, in particular, to the Court’s judgment in Jalloh, cited above) and provisions of public international law (in particular, Article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and Articles 15 and 16 of the United Nations Convention against Torture) warranted the exclusion of all evidence obtained by means of a violation of the absolute prohibition of torture and inhuman treatment. Contrary to the view taken by the domestic courts and by the Chamber, protection of the absolute right under Article 3 could not and should not be weighed against other interests, such as the satisfaction of securing a conviction. As a matter of principle, the exclusion of the evidence in question was essential for removing all incentives for engaging in torture or ill-treatment and thus for preventing such conduct in practice. (b) The Government 154. The Government invited the Grand Chamber to confirm the Chamber’s finding that there had been no violation of Article 6 §§ 1 and 3