Total inactivity of the investigation, San Marino sentenced to the ECHR
Three appeals for cases of denial of justice due to the limitation period saw the injured parties penalized in the request for compensation for damage.
ANTONIO FABBRI. Four appeals, in three of which the European Court of Human Rights recognized the denial of justice by the San Marino court against the applicants. Denied due to the inertia of the commissioner of the investigating law which then caused the limitation of the crimes executed for which the injured parties had expressed their intention to seek civil damages. The cases that arrived in Strasbourg are therefore the emblem of the issuance of prescription files, in many of which it is precisely the injured parties, the victims of crimes, who have not obtained justice.
In the specific cases dealt with by the Strasbourg Court, the first was related to a complaint for a significant amount, however the Court found that the injured party had never clearly expressed the will to become an injured party.
For the other three applicants found, however, it was the violation of their right to be recognized the possibility of obtaining compensation. In one case the two applicants were victims of personal injury. While in the other case the story concerned an episode of bullying that emerged during a trial, which the news reported at the time, for defamation of a teacher that the parents of the victim boy had accused of not having supervised. There had been a conviction for defamation of the parents, but circumstances actually emerged during the trial that claimed to presume that there had been bullying. So the parents had filed a complaint, the file had been opened, but then it hadn’t gone on. As well as other proceedings against the same investigator. The file was then reassigned – in this one as in the other case – but the new investigator “found that the crime was prescribed as no investigative act was followed after the file was opened”. So he had ordered the filing with the favorable opinion of the Tax Prosecutor.
Same thing in the other case with the new investigator who could not help but dismiss as the accusation was prescribed.
In the end, in short, the inertia of the first investigator, the Court notes, led to the prescription of the crime and, consequently, penalized the injured parties who had obliged the formation of a civil party and, therefore, a criminal ruling linked to their request. of compensation. The applicants thus turned to Strasbourg, assisted by lawyers Rossano Fabbri And Marino Federico Factorsthat it is necessary to have been penalized in their civil claims due to the inaction of the authority which led to the interruption of the criminal proceedings.
The government, through the lawyer, disputed that the applicants could still proceed civilly and that it is not certain that the criminal proceedings would have been of guilt. However, the Court observed that “it is not disputed that the criminal investigations, in the cases under examination, had been suspended due to the total inactivity of the Commissioner of the law. It follows that the failure to take into account the plaintiffs’ civil party claims was due to circumstances exclusively attributable to the judicial authority, which led to the prescription of the prosecution. Consequently, the second, third and fourth applicants were denied the possibility that their civil claims were determined by the route they had chosen to follow and which had been made available to them in the law. During this period they cannot exercise separate civil proceedings.
According to the Court, in such extreme circumstances, entirely attributable to the judicial authorities, due to their total inactivity, the applicants cannot be expected to bring a separate action, especially as such action would be civil (… probably) difficult to prove given the time elapsed “and in the absence of a criminal ruling.
Thus the Court sentenced San Marino, for the moral damages suffered by the applicants and for the expenses, to pay 5,000 euros each, for a total of 15,000 euros.
Article taken from The information of San Marino published in full after 11 pm