ECHR rules for determining the presence of sufficient balancing factors for the admission of the testimony of a prosecution witness who did not appear in court

Abstract

The article examines the legal position of the European Court of Human Rights regarding the existence of balancing factors for accepting the testimony of a prosecution witness who did not appear in court.
 It is substantiated that when the accused was not given the opportunity to question the witness during the investigation or during the trial, the European Court of Human Rights states a violation of paragraph 1 and subparagraph «d» of paragraph 3 of Article 6 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. It is shown that the given approach is not strictly categorical and the European Court of Human Rights allows the possibility of using the testimony of a witness who did not appear at the court session and was not questioned at the stage of the pre-trial investigation.
 It has been established that, the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights used the rule of the three-step test, one of the criteria of which obliges national courts to establish: whether three were sufficient balancing factors, including important procedural guarantees, which compensate for the difficulties which compensate for the difficulties with which faced by the defense as a result of accepting unverified testimony as evidence.
 It is well-founded that national courts are obliged, when faced with the problem of non-appearance or anonymity of witnesses, to consider t6he possibility of using alternative measures that limit rights to a lesser extent than accepting testimony of witnesses, to consider the possibility of using alternative measures that limit rights to a lesser extent than accepting testimony of witnesses as evidence. It is emphasized that when national courts recognize alternative measures as inexpedient and allow witness testimony to be announced, they violate paragraph 1 of sub-paragraph «d» of sub-paragraph 3 of Article 6 of the Convention on the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
 The conviction of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights is emphasized: the presence of sufficient balancing factors should be investigated not only in those cases in which the testimony of an absent witness was the only or decisive basis for the conviction of the accused, as well as in cases in which it was not possible to establish whether relevant indications are the only or decisive. At the same time, the amount of balancing factors necessary for the trial to be considered fair will depend on the importance of the testimony of the absent witness: the more important these testimonies are, the more weighty the balancing factors should be. Examples of additional guarantees that prevent violations of the mentioned legal norms are given.