Source: http://echr.ketse.com/doc/15809.02-25624.02-en-20070629/view/
Timestamp: 2017-11-23 14:41:59
Document Index: 120000546

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 2', '§ 2', '§ 7', '§ 4', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 1', '§ 44', '§ 45', '§ 47', '§ 48', '§ 49', '§ 1', '§ 67', '§ 1', '§ 47', '§ 24', '§ 32', '§ 68', '§ 40', '§ 64', '§ 44', '§ 2', '§ 113', '§ 30', '§ 39', '§ 24', '§ 23', '§ 24', '§ 53', '§ 2', '§ 68', '§ 46', '§ 40', '§ 64', '§ 1', '§ 44', '§ 55', '§ 66', '§ 117', '§ 1', '§ 117', '§ 101', '§ 2']

O'HALLORAN AND FRANCIS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM About Project
1. The case originated in two applications (nos. 15809/02 and 25624/02) against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) by two British nationals, Mr Gerard O'Halloran and Mr Idris Richard Francis (“the applicants”), on 3 April 2002 and 15 November 2001 respectively.
3. Mr O'Halloran alleged that he was convicted solely or mainly on account of the statement he was compelled to provide under threat of a penalty similar to the offence itself. Mr Francis complained that being compelled to provide evidence of the offence he was suspected of committing infringed his right not to incriminate himself. Both applicants relied on Article 6 §§ 1 and 2 of the Convention.
4. The applications were allocated to the Fourth Section of the Court (Rule 52 § 1 of the Rules of Court). On 26 October 2004 the applications were joined and on 25 October 2005, they were declared admissible by a Chamber of that Section composed of the following judges: Mr J. Casadevall, Sir Nicolas Bratza, Mr M. Pellonpää, Mr S. Pavlovschi, Mr L. Garlicki, Mrs L. Mijovič, Mr J. Šikuta, and also of Mr M. O'Boyle, Section Registrar. On 11 April 2006 the Chamber relinquished jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber, none of the parties having objected to relinquishment (Article 30 of the Convention and Rule 72).
5. The composition of the Grand Chamber was determined according to the provisions of Article 27 §§ 2 and 3 of the Convention and Rule 24 of the Rules of Court. On 19 January 2007 Mr Wildhaber's term as President of the Court came to an end. Mr Costa succeeded him in that capacity and took over the presidency of the Grand Chamber in the present case (Rule 9 § 2). Mr. Wildhaber and Mr. Pellonpää continued to sit following the expiry of their terms of office, in accordance with Article 23 § 7 of the Convention and Rule 24 § 4.
Mr G. O'Halloran,
11. The attached notice of intention to prosecute (NIP) informed the applicant that it was intended to institute proceedings against the driver of the vehicle. He was asked to furnish the full name and address of the driver of the vehicle on the relevant occasion or to supply other information that was in his power to give and which would lead to the driver's identification. He was again informed that a failure to provide information was a criminal offence under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988.
13. On 27 March 2001, the applicant was summoned to attend North Essex Magistrates' Court where he was tried for driving in excess of the speed limit. Prior to the trial, the applicant sought to exclude the confession made in response to the notice of intention to prosecute, invoking sections 76 and 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 read in conjunction with Article 6 of the Convention. His application was refused in the light of the decision of the Privy Council in Brown v. Stott [2001] 2 WLR 817. Thereafter the prosecution relied upon the photograph of the speeding vehicle and the admission obtained as a result of the section 172 demand. The applicant was convicted and fined GBP 100, ordered to pay GBP 150 costs and his licence endorsed with six penalty points.
15. On 23 April 2001, the magistrates' clerk informed the applicant that the magistrates refused to state a case as the issue had already been decided definitively by the Privy Council in Brown v. Stott (cited above) and the High Court in Director of Public Prosecutions v. Wilson ([2001] EWHC Admin 198).
16. On 19 October 2001, the applicant's application for judicial review of the magistrates' decision was refused.
22. On 28 August 2001, the applicant was summoned to the Magistrates' Court for failing to comply with section 172(3) of the Road Traffic Act 1988. He obtained an adjournment.
23. On 9 November 2001, the Magistrates' Court agreed to further postponement, apparently with reference to the applicant's proceeding with an application in Strasbourg. The applicant wrote to the Court on 15 November 2001, invoking Articles 6 §§ 1 and 2 of the Convention.
24. On 8 February 2002, the Magistrates' Court cancelled the postponement and fixed the trial for 15 April 2002, on which date the applicant was convicted and fined GBP 750 with GBP 250 costs and 3 penalty points. He states that the fine was substantially heavier than that which would have been imposed if he had pleaded guilty to the speeding offence.
25. Section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 ("the 1988 Act") deals with the duty to give information of a driver of a vehicle in certain circumstances. Subsection (1) refers to the traffic offences to which the section applies. They include parking on a cycle track (under section 21 of the 1988 Act) and causing death by reckless driving (section 1), offences under a number of other provisions, including speeding, and manslaughter by the driver of a motor vehicle.
30. In Brown v. Stott [2001] 2 WLR 817 the Privy Council considered the case of a woman arrested for shoplifting in the vicinity of a car that appeared to be hers. She was breathalysed and tested positive for alcohol consumption. With a view to ascertaining whether she had been guilty of driving her car while under the influence of alcohol (contrary to section 5 of the 1988 Act) the police served her with a section 172 notice. The Procurator Fiscal sought to use her answer that she had been driving as the basis for a prosecution for driving with excess alcohol. The High Court of Justiciary allowed the defendant's appeal, finding that the prosecution could not rely on evidence of the admission which she had been compelled to make.
33. The applicants submitted that the criminal limb of Article 6 § 1 was applicable in their case because each of them had received a Notice of Intended Prosecution, and each of them was fined, Mr O'Halloran for driving in excess of the speed limit, and Mr Francis for refusing to give the name of the driver on the occasion at issue.
42. They recalled that in the cases of Saunders and Heaney and McGuinness (both cited above) the Court had held that the public interest could not be invoked to justify the use of answers compulsorily obtained. They rejected the Government's arguments that there was any protection against use of the material in the provisions of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) as sections 76 and 78 of PACE could not exclude testimony collected in accordance with a statutory provision. As the applicants had been subject to pending criminal proceedings and not a purely regulatory inquiry when subjected to direct compulsion, there had therefore been breaches of both Article 6 §§ 1 and 2 of the Convention.
43. The Court first notes that the applicants were in different factual situations. Mr O'Halloran accepted that he had been the driver on the occasion at issue, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to have that evidence excluded from his trial. He was then convicted of speeding. Mr Francis refused to give the name of the driver at the time and date referred to in his Notice of Intended Prosecution, and was convicted for the refusal. The case of Mr O'Halloran appears at first sight to resemble the case of Saunders (referred to above), in which the applicant complained of the use in criminal proceedings of evidence which, he claimed, had been obtained in breach of Article 6. Mr Francis' case, on the other hand, would seem to be more similar to the cases of Funke (cited above), J.B. v. Switzerland (no. 31827/96, ECHR 2001-III), Heaney and McGuinness (cited above), and Shannon v. the United Kingdom, (no. 6563/03, 4 October 2005), in each of which the applicant was fined for not providing information, and in each of which the Court considered the fine independently of the existence or outcome of underlying proceedings.
45. In the case of Funke, the applicant was convicted for his failure to produce “papers and documents ... relating to operations of interest to [the customs] department” which they believed must exist (Article 65 of the Customs Code). The Court found that the attempt to compel the applicant himself to provide the evidence of the offences he had allegedly committed infringed his right to remain silent and not to contribute to incriminating himself (Funke, cited above, § 44). The Court elaborated no further on the nature of the right to remain silent and not to contribute to incriminating oneself.
46. The John Murray (judgment of 8 February 1996, Reports of Judgments and Decisions 1996-I) case concerned, amongst other things, the drawing of inferences from a person's silence during questioning and trial. The Court found that there was no doubt that “the right to remain silent under police questioning and the privilege against self-incrimination are generally recognised international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair trial ... By providing the accused with protection against improper compulsion by the authorities these immunities contribute to avoiding miscarriages of justice and to securing the aims of Article 6” (John Murray, cited above, § 45). The Court saw two extremes. On the one hand, it was self-evident that it was incompatible with the immunities to base a conviction solely or mainly on the accused's silence or on a refusal to answer questions or to give evidence himself. On the other hand, the immunities could and should not prevent the accused's silence from being taken into account in situations which clearly called for an explanation. The conclusion was that the “right to remain silent” was not absolute (ibid., § 47). In discussing the degree of compulsion in the case, the Court noted that the applicant's silence did not amount to a criminal offence or contempt of court, and that silence could not, in itself, be regarded as an indication of guilt (ibid.,§ 48). The Court thus distinguished the case from Funke, where the degree of compulsion had, in effect, “destroyed the very essence of the privilege against self-incrimination” (ibid.,§ 49).
47. The case of Saunders concerned the use at the applicant's criminal trial of statements which had been obtained under legal compulsion under the Companies Act 1985. The domestic provisions required company officers to produce books and documents, to attend before inspectors and to assist inspectors in their investigation on pain of a fine or committal to prison for two years. The Court referred to the cases of John Murray and Funke, and found that the right not to incriminate oneself was primarily concerned with respecting the will of an accused person to remain silent. It did 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 had an existence independent of the will of the suspect, such as breath, blood and urine samples. The Court held that the question whether the use made by the prosecution of the statements obtained from the applicant by the inspectors under compulsion amounted to an unjustifiable infringement of the right “had to be examined in the light of all the circumstances of the case”: in particular, it had to be determined whether the applicant had been subjected to compulsion to give evidence and whether the use made of the resulting testimony offended the basic principles of a fair procedure under Article 6 § 1 (Saunders, cited above §§ 67 and 69).
49. In the case of Heaney and McGuinness, the applicants, who had been arrested in connection with a bombing, declined to answer questions under special legislation requiring an individual to provide a full account of his movements and actions during a specified period. They were acquitted of the substantive offence, and imprisoned for failing to give an account of their movements. After reviewing the case-law and finding Article 6 §§ 1 and 2 to be applicable, the Court accepted that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself were not absolute rights. It then found, after considering the various procedural protections available, that the “degree of compulsion” imposed on the applicants, namely, a conviction and imprisonment for failing to give “a full account of [their] movements and actions during any specified period and all information in [their] possession in relation to the commission or intended commission ... [of specified offences]”, “in effect destroyed the very essence of their privilege against self-incrimination and their right to remain silent”. Thereafter, the Court considered that the security and public order concerns relied on by the Government could not justify the provision (Heaney and McGuinness, cited above, §§ 47-58, with reference back to § 24).
50. The applicant in the case of Weh v. Austria (no. 38544/97, 8 April 2004) was fined for giving inaccurate information in reply to a request from the District Authority under the Motor Vehicles Act to disclose the name and address of the driver of his car on a particular date. Proceedings had already been opened against unknown offenders. The Court declined to rely on the earlier cases of P., R. and H. v. Austria (nos. 15135/89, 15136/89 and 15137/89, Commission's decision of 5 September 1989, Decisions and Reports 62, p. 319), and it noted that the applicant had been required to do no more than state a simple fact – who had been the driver of his car – which was not in itself incriminating. The Court found that in the case before it, there was no link between the criminal proceedings which had been initiated against persons unknown and the proceedings in which the applicant was fined for giving inaccurate information (Weh, referred to above, §§ 32-56).
52. The case of Jalloh v. Germany ([GC], no. 54810/00, ECHR 2006-...) concerned the use of evidence in the form of drugs swallowed by the applicant, which had been obtained by the forcible administration of emetics. The Court considered the right to remain silent and the privilege against self-incrimination in the following terms:
100. As regards the use of evidence obtained in breach of the right to silence and the privilege against self-incrimination, the Court recalls that these are generally recognised international standards which lie at the heart of the notion of a fair procedure under Article 6. Their rationale lies, inter alia, in the protection of the accused against improper compulsion by the authorities, thereby contributing to the avoidance of miscarriages of justice and to the fulfilment of the aims of Article 6. The right not to incriminate oneself, in particular, presupposes 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 (see, inter alia, Saunders v. the United Kingdom, [...] § 68; Heaney and McGuinness, cited above, § 40; J.B. v. Switzerland, no. 31827/96, § 64, ECHR 2001-III; and Allan [Allan v. the United Kingdom, no. 48539/99, ECHR 2002-IX], § 44).
115. Thirdly, the evidence in the present case was obtained by means of a procedure which violated Article 3. The procedure used in the applicant's case is in striking contrast to procedures for obtaining, for example, a breath test or a blood sample. Procedures of the latter kind do not, unless in exceptional circumstances, attain the minimum level of severity so as to contravene Article 3. Moreover, though constituting an interference with the suspect's right to respect for private life, these procedures are, in general, justified under Article 8 § 2 as being necessary for the prevention of criminal offences (see, inter alia, Tirado Ortiz and Lozano Martin, [(dec.), no. 43486/98, ECHR 1999-V]).
53. The applicants contended that the right to remain silent and the right not to incriminate oneself are absolute rights and that to apply any form of direct compulsion to require an accused person to make incriminatory statements against his will of itself destroys the very essence of that right. The Court is unable to accept this. It is true, as pointed out by the applicants, that in all the cases to date in which “direct compulsion” was applied to require an actual or potential suspect to provide information which contributed, or might have contributed, to his conviction, the Court has found a violation of the applicant's privilege against self-incrimination. It does not, however, follow that any direct compulsion will automatically result in a violation. While the right to a fair trial under Article 6 is an unqualified right, what constitutes a fair trial cannot be the subject of a single unvarying rule but must depend on the circumstances of the particular case. This was confirmed in the specific context of the right to remain silent in the case of Heaney and McGuinness and, more recently, in the Court's Jalloh judgment, in which the Court identified the factors to which it would have regard in determining whether the applicant's privilege against self-incrimination had been violated.
54. The applicants maintained that the Jalloh case was distinguishable from the present in that it concerned not the obtaining by compulsion of incriminatory statements but rather the use of “real” evidence of the kind indicated in the Saunders judgment such as breath, blood and urine samples and thus was an exception to the general rule laid down in that judgment. The Court accepts that the factual circumstances of Jalloh were very different from the present case. It is nevertheless unpersuaded by the applicants' argument. Even if a clear distinction could be drawn in every case between the use of compulsion to obtain incriminatory statements on the one hand and “real” evidence of an incriminatory nature on the other, the Court observes that the Jalloh case was not treated as one falling within the “real” evidence exception in the Saunders judgment; on the contrary, the Court held that the case was to be treated as one of self-incrimination according to the broader meaning given to that term in the cases of Funke and J.B. v. Switzerland to encompass cases in which coercion to hand over incriminatory evidence was in issue (Jalloh, cited above, §§ 113-116).
55. In the light of the principles contained in its Jalloh judgment, and in order to determine whether the essence of the applicants' right to remain silent and privilege against self-incrimination was infringed, the Court will focus on the nature and degree of compulsion used to obtain the evidence, the existence of any relevant safeguards in the procedure, and the use to which any material so obtained was put.
56. The nature and degree of the compulsion used to obtain the evidence in the case of Mr O'Halloran, or to attempt to obtain the evidence in the case of Mr Francis, were set out in the Notice of Intended Prosecution each applicant received. They were informed that, as registered keepers of their vehicles, they were required to provide the full name and address of the driver at the time and on the occasion specified. They were each informed that failure to provide the information was a criminal offence under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. The penalty for failure by the applicants to give information was a fine of up to GBP 1,000, and disqualification from driving or an endorsement of three penalty points on their driving licence.
57. The Court accepts that the compulsion was of a direct nature, as was the compulsion in other cases in which fines were threatened or imposed for failure to provide information. In the present case, the compulsion was imposed in the context of section 172 of the Road Traffic Act, which imposes a specific duty on the registered keeper of a vehicle to give information about the driver of the vehicle in certain circumstances. The Court notes that although both the compulsion and the underlying offences were “criminal” in nature, the compulsion flowed from the fact, as Lord Bingham expressed it in the Privy Council in the case of Brown v. Stott (see paragraph 31 above), that “All who own or drive motor cars know that by doing so they subject themselves to a regulatory regime. This regime is imposed not because owning or driving cars is a privilege or indulgence granted by the State but because the possession and use of cars (like, for example, shotguns ...) are recognised to have the potential to cause grave injury”. Those who choose to keep and drive motor cars can be taken to have accepted certain responsibilities and obligations as part of the regulatory regime relating to motor vehicles, and in the legal framework of the United Kingdom, these responsibilities include the obligation, in the event of suspected commission of road traffic offences, to inform the authorities of the identity of the driver on that occasion.
58. A further aspect of the compulsion applied in the present cases is the limited nature of the inquiry which the police were authorised to undertake. Section 172 (2)(a) applies only where the driver of the vehicle is alleged to have committed a relevant offence, and authorises the police to require information only “as to the identity of the driver”. The information is thus markedly more restricted than in previous cases, in which applicants have been subjected to statutory powers requiring production of “papers and documents of any kind relating to operations of interest to [the] department” (Funke, referred to above, § 30), or of “documents etc. which might be relevant for the assessment of taxes” (J.B v. Switzerland, cited above, § 39). In the case of Heaney and McGuinness the applicants were required to give a “full account of [their] movements and actions during any specified period ...” (referred to above, § 24), and in that of Shannon, information could be sought (with only a limited legal professional privilege restriction) on any matter which appeared to the investigator to relate to the investigation (see reference at § 23 of the Shannon judgment referred to above). The information requested of the applicant in the case of Weh was limited, as in the present case, to “information as to who had driven a certain motor vehicle ... at a certain time ...” (Weh judgment cited above, § 24). The Court found no violation of Article 6 in that case on the ground that no proceedings were pending or anticipated against him. It noted that the requirement to state a simple fact – who had been the driver of the car – was not in itself incriminating (ibid., §§ 53-54). Further, as Lord Bingham noted in Brown v. Stott (paragraph 31 above), section 172 does not sanction prolonged questioning about facts alleged to give rise to criminal offences, and the penalty for declining to answer is “moderate and non-custodial”.
60. As to the use to which the statements were put, Mr O'Halloran's statement that he was the driver of his car was admissible as evidence of that fact by virtue of section 12(1) of the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 (see paragraph 27 above), and he was duly convicted of speeding. At his trial, he attempted to challenge the admission of the statement under sections 76 and 78 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, although the challenge was unsuccessful. It remained for the prosecution to prove the offence beyond reasonable doubt in ordinary proceedings, including protection against the use of unreliable evidence and evidence obtained by oppression or other improper means (but not including a challenge to the admissibility of the statement under section 172), and the defendant could give evidence and call witnesses if he wished. Again as noted in the case of Brown v. Stott, the identity of the driver is only one element in the offence of speeding, and there is no question of a conviction arising in the underlying proceedings in respect solely of the information obtained as a result of section 172(2)(a).
62. Having regard to all the circumstances of the case, including the special nature of the regulatory regime at issue and the limited nature of the information sought by a notice under section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988, the Court considers that the essence of the applicants' right to remain silent and their privilege against self-incrimination has not been destroyed.
“...The right of an accused not to be forced into assisting in his own prosecution is perhaps the most important principle in criminal law and the principles of fundamental justice require that courts retain the discretion to exempt witnesses from being compelled to testify, in appropriate circumstances. The person claiming the exemption has the burden of satisfying the judge that in all the circumstances the prejudice to his interests overbears the necessity of obtaining the evidence. ... Defining 'self-incrimination' over-inclusively as arising whenever the state obtains evidence which it could not have obtained 'but for' the individual's participation would take the notion of self-incrimination far beyond the communicative character that grounds it at common law. ... Both the common law and the Charter draw a fundamental distinction between incriminating evidence and self-incriminating evidence: the former is evidence which tends to establish the accused's guilt, while the latter is evidence which tends to establish the accused's guilt by his own admission, or based upon his own communication. The s. 7 principle against self-incrimination that is fundamental to justice requires protection against the use of compelled evidence which tends to establish the accused's guilt on the basis of the latter grounds, but not the former3.”
The marked shift to the federal standard in state cases began with Lisenba v. California, ... where the Court spoke of the accused's 'free choice to admit, to deny, or to refuse to answer'... The shift reflects recognition that the American system of criminal prosecution is accusatorial, not inquisitorial, and that the Fifth Amendment privilege is its essential mainstay. ... Governments, state and federal, are thus constitutionally compelled to establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured, and may not by coercion prove a charge against an accused out of his own mouth. Since the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States from inducing a person to confess through 'sympathy falsely aroused' ... or other like inducement far short of 'compulsion by torture', ... it follows a fortiori that it also forbids the States to resort to imprisonment, as here, to compel him to answer questions that might incriminate him. The Fourteenth Amendment secures against state invasion the same privilege that the Fifth Amendment guarantees against federal infringement – the right of a person to remain silent unless he chooses to speak in the unfettered exercise of his own will, and to suffer no penalty, as held in Twining, for such silence4.”
The right not to incriminate oneself in particular presupposes 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 in question is closely linked to the presumption of innocence contained in Article 6 § 2 of the Convention (see Saunders v. the United Kingdom, judgment of 17 December 1996, Reports 1996-VI, p. 2064, § 68; Serves v. France, judgment of 20 October 1997, Reports 1997-VI, pp. 2173-74, § 46; Heaney and McGuinness v. Ireland, no. 34720/97, § 40, ECHR 2000-XII; and J.B. v. Switzerland, no. 31827/96, § 64, ECHR 2001-III).
First, there are cases relating to the use of compulsion for the purpose of obtaining information which might incriminate the person concerned in pending or anticipated criminal proceedings against him, in other words, in respect of an offence with which that person has been “charged” within the autonomous meaning of Article 6 § 1 (see Funke v. France, judgment of 25 February 1993, Series A no. 256-A, p. 22, § 44; Heaney and McGuinness, cited above, §§ 55-59; and J.B., cited above, §§ 66-71).
In Jalloh, the Court adopted what appears to be a wholly new approach to self-incrimination. For the first time, it considered the following factors: (a) the nature and degree of compulsion used to obtain the evidence; (b) the weight of the public interest in the investigation and punishment of the offence at issue; (c) the existence of any relevant safeguards in the procedure, and (d) the use to which any material so obtained is put (see Jalloh v. Germany [GC], no. 54810/00, §§ 117-121, ECHR 2006-...).
In my view, the provisions of section 172 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 amount to a deviation from the principle of prohibition of “compulsory self-incrimination” and a breach of the right to silence, and can be considered as subjecting the individuals concerned to a legal compulsion to give evidence against themselves. Moreover, the applicants in this case were actually subjected to legal compulsion to give evidence which incriminated them.
1. I disagree with the opinion of the majority that there has been no violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
4. Practice shows that in order to be able to investigate and prosecute traffic offences effectively without unduly limiting the rights of the defence, a number of Contracting States have used various legislative techniques avoiding the pitfalls at issue in the present case. They have, for example, chosen to draw adverse inferences from a failure to answer questions, or established a statutory but rebuttable presumption of fact that the registered owner of the motor vehicle was the driver in question (see, for instance, Falk v. the Netherlands (dec.), no. 66273/01, 19 October 2004). The Government's argument that “the very fact that other legislative techniques could bring substantially about the same result indicates that questions of proportionality – rather than the absolute nature of the rights suggested by the applicants in cases of direct compulsion – were at issue” (paragraph 39) is unconvincing. To put it plainly, if the desired result can be achieved by proceeding in a way that is both effective and right, then one should not choose a wrong way, however effective it may be. In my opinion the applicants were right in submitting that the United Kingdom has just chosen the wrong legal solution to deal with the problems caused by the misuse of motor vehicles.
5. Although this has not been expressly mentioned in the judgment, the majority find no violation because this case is about “implied consent”. In paragraph 57 of the judgment the majority – having quoted and endorsed the views of Lord Bingham in the case of Brown v. Stott – accept that “[t]hose who choose to keep and drive motor cars can be taken to have accepted certain responsibilities and obligations as part of the regulatory regime relating to motor violations, and in the legal framework of the United Kingdom, these responsibilities include the obligation, in the event of
6. In quoting and endorsing the views of Lord Bingham, the majority in fact also seem to play the “public interest” card in the form of a rather tricky new criterion which was first stated in § 117 (but not in § 101) of the Jalloh judgment in order to determine whether the right not to incriminate oneself has been violated: “the weight of the public interest in the investigation and punishment of the offence at issue”. This is, moreover, a new criterion which is incompatible with the established case-law that the use of incriminating statements obtained from the accused under compulsion in such a way as to extinguish the very essence of the right to remain silent, cannot in principle be justified by reference to the public interest served. Surprisingly, however, paragraph 55, which sets out the criteria on which the Court bases its examination “[i]n the light of the principles contained in its Jalloh judgment and in order to determine whether the essence of the applicant's right to remain silent and privilege against self-incrimination was infringed”, makes no mention of the public interest criterion: it only mentions the other Jalloh criteria (the nature and degree of compulsion used to obtain the evidence; the existence of any relevant safeguards in the procedure; and the use to which any material so obtained was put).
7. I accept that, having regard especially to this new Jalloh criterion, the present judgment might be considered as a legal continuum to that judgment. However, in my opinion, today's judgment also shows what may happen if “the weight of the public interest” is allowed to play a role in deciding whether or not the right to remain silent should be upheld.
8. It is well known that the Court is faced with an enormous backlog. This has prompted, among other things, the new admissibility criterion that is due to be introduced by Protocol No. 14 to the Convention (the new Article 35 § 2 (b) of the Convention) which, if one will, the present judgment appears to anticipate for a particular category of cases. If in fact the majority had decided unequivocally that, in order to be able to deal with the real core human rights issues, a de minimis non curat praetor rule for this “Treaty of Rome” was inevitable, which would mean reversing Öztürk and accepting that from now on the handling of traffic offences would no longer fall within the ambit of Article 6, then I might have agreed with such an approach. But my consent to such an approach would have had to be conditional on the provision of safeguards against abuse – and express, not implied.
2 See Uniform Code of Military Justice, Article 31 “Compulsory Self-Incrimination Prohibited” http://www.constitution.org/mil/ucmj19970615.htm.
3 See: R v. S (R.J.) [1995] 1 S.C.R. 451 http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/1995/1995rcs1-451/1995rcs1-451.html.
4 See Malloy v. Hogan, 378 U.S. 1 (1964) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/cgi-bin/getcase.pl?friend=nytimes&navby=case&court=us&vol=378&invol=1.
O'HALLORAN AND FRANCIS v. THE UNITED KINGDOM JUDGMENT