8.  The applicant was born in 1960 and died in 2012.
9.  On 26 July 2003 the body of a man, Mr Z., was discovered in the applicant’s village in the Nemyriv district of the Vinnytsya Region.
10.  On 27 July 2003 the applicant was arrested, ostensibly for the administrative offence of maliciously disobeying a police officer.
11.  According to the applicant, he was arrested on suspicion of Z.’s murder, and on 1 August 2003 the police ill-treated him to make him confess to the murder. In particular, he alleges that he was dunked in a vat of heavily chlorinated water, had electric shocks applied to his genitalia, and was beaten and hung by his elbows from a metal rod for a substantial period of time.
12.  On 1 and 8 August 2003 a witness, Mr I., was questioned by the police and stated that on the night of the murder he had seen the applicant in the victim’s backyard and that he had then, with blood on his hands, come to his house and told him that he had hit the victim.
13.  On 4 August 2003 the applicant, in the absence of a lawyer, confessed to Z.’s murder.
14.  On 6 August 2003 he was formally arrested on suspicion of the murder.
15.  On 7 August 2003 he was questioned in the presence of a lawyer and retracted his confession as having been given under duress. In view of his allegations the next day the investigator requested a forensic medical opinion concerning his injuries.
16.  On 10 August 2003 a forensic medical expert observed a number of injuries on the applicant’s body. The expert noted that the applicant was alleging that he had been tortured. He documented a number of haematomas and abrasions and concluded that they could have been inflicted at the time and in the circumstances alleged by the applicant.
17.  On 15 August 2003 a district court judge rejected the investigator’s request to remand the applicant in custody and released him, holding that there was no evidence in the file to show that there was a reasonable suspicion against him and noting his allegation that his confession had been coerced.
18.  On 16 August 2003 the applicant was released. Prior to his release he wrote a statement in the presence of the officer on duty at the police station affirming that he had not been ill-treated and had no complaints against the police.
19.  From 22 August to 19 September 2003 the applicant underwent a course of rehabilitation treatment in hospital, after being diagnosed with “post-traumatic paresis of the forearm nerves due to compression of both forearms”.
20.  On 26 September 2003 the prosecutor’s office refused to institute criminal proceedings against the police officers for ill-treatment. It was noted that they had denied having ill-treated the applicant, that the applicant had made a statement on 16 August 2003 affirming that he had not been ill‑treated and that the police unit in question had not been equipped with an electric shock device.
21.  On 5 February 2004 Ms G., Ms K. and Mr N. made videotaped statements to the investigator to the effect that, in October 2003, the applicant had confessed to them all (on the same occasion) that he had committed the murder.
22.  On an unspecified date in 2004 the investigation into the murder was suspended because the perpetrator could not be identified.
23.  On 1 February 2007 a certain Ms O., who was in prison, informed the prison authorities that in July 2004, when she had lived in the same village as the applicant, he had confessed to her that he had murdered Z. and had described the circumstances of the murder to her.
24.  On 8 February 2007 she repeated her statement to Mr S., an investigator of the Nemyriv district prosecutor’s office. Her statement was video-recorded.
25.  The investigation was resumed.
26.  On 20 February 2007, based in part on O.’s new evidence, the applicant was again arrested on suspicion of the murder.
27.  The applicant stood trial for murder before the Vinnytsya Regional Court of Appeal, sitting as the trial court.
28.  O. was examined and cross-examined by the defence in court on 10 October 2007. She confirmed her testimony incriminating the applicant.
29.  At a hearing on 12 November 2007 the trial court examined a letter dated 11 October 2007 which O. had sent to the trial court. In it she asked the court to disregard her statements and stated that she had given them under pressure from S., the investigator (see paragraph 24 above). She also asked to be examined again in court. The defence asked for the same. The trial court ordered the prosecutor’s office to investigate O.’s allegations and held that the defence’s application to have her re-examined would be considered after the investigation was completed.
30.  The investigation was conducted by the Nemyriv district prosecutor. O., who was still in prison at the time, was questioned. She reaffirmed her incriminating statements as having been made of her own free will and stated that she had written to the trial court because one of the applicant’s lawyers had said, in the course of the cross-examination, that she might be criminally liable for any false statements. S., the investigator who had questioned O. in February 2007, and the two police officers present on that occasion were also questioned and denied that any pressure had been used to compel O. to make a statement. On 6 December 2007 the prosecutor refused to institute criminal proceedings against S. for lack of constituent elements of a crime in his actions.
31.  On 11 January 2008 the trial court received another letter from O., in which she retracted her previous letter. The defence again asked that she be called. The trial court refused to recall her as a witness.
32.  On 25 February 2008 the trial court convicted the applicant of murder and sentenced him to thirteen years’ imprisonment. It relied on the evidence of the witnesses O., I., G., K. and N. (see paragraphs 29, 12 and 21 above respectively), who had reiterated in court their statements given in the course of the pre-trial investigation. It also relied on the statements of a number of other witnesses who had testified regarding various aspects of the case other than the applicant’s guilt. In the trial court’s judgment the evidence of I., K., G. and O. was mentioned separately, and in that order, as disproving the applicant’s denials of his guilt.
33.  As to I.’s statements in particular, the trial court stated that they were detailed and directly pointed to the applicant’s guilt. I. had not only made those statements in the course of the pre-trial investigation and in court but had also reiterated them in the course of face-to-face confrontations with the applicant and another witness in the course of the pre-trial investigation. G. and K. had also reiterated their statements in confrontations with the applicant.
34.  As to O.’s evidence, the trial court stated that she had reiterated her pre-trial statement in the course of the trial in the applicant’s presence and that there had been no reason to distrust that testimony. Certain details she had provided coincided with those provided by I. and discovered in the course of a crime scene investigation. As to the retraction of her testimony, the court considered it appropriate to disregard it since the district prosecutor had checked her allegations that her initial statements had been given under pressure, had found those allegations unfounded and had delivered a reasoned decision refusing to institute criminal proceedings.
35.  On 24 March 2008 the applicant appealed in cassation. He argued primarily that the trial court had erred in its assessment of the evidence. He also argued, among other things, that the court had unjustifiably refused to recall O. as a witness despite the retraction of her testimony and that a search conducted in his home in 2003  which had apparently not returned any incriminating items  had been unlawful for various reasons, including the fact that at the time it had been conducted he had been in detention being tortured.
36.  On 10 July 2008, in a final decision, a panel of three judges of the Supreme Court upheld the trial court’s judgment. It found that the court had correctly assessed the evidence and that there were no grounds to put in doubt its findings.
37.  Following a request by the applicant for the proceedings to be reopened, on 21 May 2009 five judges of the Supreme Court asked the plenary formation of the Supreme Court (consisting of all the judges of the court’s criminal and military divisions) to reopen the proceedings in the applicant’s case in view of the exceptional circumstances (see paragraph 42 below), to quash his sentence and to order a retrial. The judges argued, in particular: (i) that there was medical evidence in the file which indicated that the applicant had been seriously ill-treated in 2003, in particular by being hung by his elbows, (ii) that the investigation into his allegations in this regard had been superficial, and (iii) that the trial court had failed to comment on this. The judges also pointed out what they believed to be a number of contradictions in the evidence cited by the trial court in the judgment for the applicant’s conviction.
38.  On 5 June 2009 the plenary formation of the court held that the arguments cited by the five judges could only serve as a basis for reopening the proceedings if they had been first investigated by the prosecutor’s office and found to be “newly established circumstances” justifying a reopening (see paragraph 42 below). However, the court observed that the prosecutor’s office had not conducted such an investigation and had not made such a finding.
39.  The parties did not inform the Court whether the applicant attempted to initiate, before the prosecutor’s office, an investigation of the type mentioned by the plenary formation of the Supreme Court.
40.  In the application, lodged by his initial representative on his behalf on 9 January 2009, the applicant described, in the “Statement of the facts” section of the form, the ill-treatment he had allegedly suffered in August 2003 (see paragraph 11 above). In the “Statement of alleged violation(s) of the Convention and/or Protocols and relevant arguments” part of the form he complained under Article 6 § 2 that his right to be presumed innocent had been breached in that the domestic authorities had relied on evidence obtained unlawfully and under Article 6 § 3 (d) that the domestic courts had failed to re-examine O. after she had retracted her initial testimony.
41.  On 1 April 2013 Mr Levytskyy wrote to the Court on behalf of the applicant’s mother concerning the applicant’s death and expressed the mother’s wish to pursue the application in his stead. In his letter Mr Levytskyy provided two arguments concerning the applicant’s mother’s right to pursue the application. Firstly, he stated that the applicant had been convicted on the basis of statements made under torture. Secondly, Mr Levytskyy stated that:
“The applicant’s former representative... is a journalist by training. However, this is not why she described in the application the acts of torture but limited the application to a violation of Article 6 of the Convention only, leaving the acts of torture outside of the scope of the application... At the time the application was lodged in 2008-2009 the Court was declaring applications under Article 3 inadmissible where applicants failed to appeal to court against the prosecutor’s office’s decision not to institute criminal proceedings.”
Mr Levytskyy went on to describe the Court’s approach to the admissibility of such complaints adopted in Kaverzin v. Ukraine (no. 23893/03, §§ 97-99, 15 May 2012) and asked the Court to allow the applicant’s mother to pursue the application. The change in the Court’s approach to the admissibility of complaints concerning alleged ill-treatment by law-enforcement officers, to which Mr Levytskyy referred, is described in paragraphs 59 and 60 below.