CEDH · PRESS;CHAMBERJUDGMENTS;ENG — 10 juin 2008

.s800EAC49 { font-size:12pt } .sFE10DC93 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:center } .s29100277 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold } .s40F41F73 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:right } .s32563E28 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt } .sBB9EE52A { font-family:Arial } .s7ED160F0 { text-decoration:none } .s653E6C45 { font-family:Arial; font-size:6.67pt; vertical-align:super; color:#0069d6 } .s4DDA3AA3 { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; font-style:italic } .sA36B60A1 { font-family:Arial; font-style:italic } .sCB9E0544 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; text-align:left } .sADADF4A7 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline } .s3DC36BA9 { font-family:Arial; text-decoration:underline; color:#0069d6 } .sC7EAD8B { font-family:Arial; font-weight:bold; text-decoration:underline } .sF6A12959 { width:33%; height:1px; text-align:left } .s2EB42ED2 { margin-top:0pt; margin-bottom:0pt; font-size:10pt } EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS   419 10.06.2008   Press release issued by the Registrar   CHAMBER JUDGMENT SCOPPOLA v. ITALY   The European Court of Human Rights has today notified in writing its Chamber judgment [1] in the case of Scoppola v. Italy (application no. 50550/06).   The Court held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment) of the European Convention on Human Rights because the applicant’s conditions of detention were not appropriate to his state of health.   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicant 5,000   euros   (EUR) in respect of non-pecuniary damage and EUR   5,000 for costs and expenses. (The judgment is available only in French.)   1.     Principal facts   The applicant, Franco Scoppola, is an Italian national who was born in 1940 and is currently in Parma Prison (Italy).   He was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Rome Assize Court in January 2002 for killing his wife and wounding one of his children in an argument in September 1999.   In December 2003 the applicant, who was in Regina Coeli Prison in Rome and was confined to a wheelchair, unsuccessfully requested to be transferred to another prison in Rome, whose architectural design would have allowed him time outside the prison and more humane conditions of detention.   According to a medical report of 9 January 2006, drawn up at the request of the applicant’s lawyer, the applicant’s state of health was “totally incompatible with detention in prison and required the adoption of alternative measures, such as transfer to a hospital outside the prison capable of providing the applicant with suitable and necessary medical care, or to a home for the treatment and rehabilitation of long-term patients requiring 24-hour care”.   After breaking his thigh bone in April 2006, the applicant was admitted to Sandro Pertini Hospital . A medical report drawn up on 6 June 2006 certified that the applicant could leave hospital on condition that he was transferred to a treatment centre capable of providing him with the necessary care (in particular, round-the-clock care, a special anti ‑ bedsores mattress and physiotherapy).   On 16 June 2006 the Rome court responsible for the execution of sentences granted the applicant detention at home for one year on the grounds that his state of health required care that could not be provided in prison and had reached the stage where it had become an “unnecessary violation of the prohibition of inhuman treatment in respect of the prisoner”. That decision was set aside on 8 September 2006 on the ground that detention at home was impossible because the applicant did not have a home adapted to his needs.   On 29 December 2006 the Prison Service of the Ministry of Justice ordered the applicant to be transferred to Parma Prison, which had appropriate facilities for disabled inmates. The applicant was not transferred until 23 September 2007.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 19 December 2006.   Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:   Françoise Tulkens (Belgian), President , Antonella Mularoni (San Marinese), Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italian), Danutė Jočienė (Lithuanian), Dragoljub Popović (Serbian), András Sajó (Hungarian), Işıl Karakaş (Turkish), judges , and also Sally Dollé , Section Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [2]   Complaint   Relying on Article   3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), the applicant alleged that keeping him in prison constituted inhuman treatment.   Decision of the Court   Article 3   The Court observed that the applicant, who has been unable to walk since 1987 and fractured his thigh bone in April 2006, was confined to a wheelchair. He had no personal autonomy whatsoever and stated that he was obliged to spend every day in bed, which has not been disputed by the Government. He was now 67 years old, suffered from heart disease and a failing metabolism, diabetes, deteriorating muscles, hypertrophy in the prostate gland and depression. The expert instructed by the applicant concluded that his state of health was incompatible with detention in prison, given that he required round-the-clock care. That opinion appears to have been confirmed by the medical report of 6 June 2006 recommending that the applicant be moved to a suitably equipped treatment centre.   In the light of those expert opinions, on 16 June 2006 the Rome court responsible for the execution of sentences granted the applicant detention at home, stating that the care he required was unavailable in prison and that continuing to deprive him of his freedom in a prison establishment would have amounted to inhuman treatment. The Court does not see any reason to reconsider that conclusion.   The Court also noted that the decision to allow the applicant to serve his sentence outside the prison had been set aside on 8   September 2006 on the ground that the applicant did not have a home with facilities adapted to his condition. Consequently, the applicant was kept in a prison.   The Court did not overlook the efforts made by the Italian authorities, which had placed the applicant in a prison that was equipped with a clinical centre and was architecturally better suited to the applicant’s condition (Parma Prison). Furthermore, in both prisons the applicant had undergone numerous medical tests designed to treat his failing metabolism and had had physiotherapy sessions. However, the absence of an intention on the part of the national authorities to humiliate or debase the person concerned did not definitively rule out a finding of a violation of Article 3.   In the applicant’s case the requirement, underscored by the Rome court responsible for the execution of sentences, that the applicant not be detained in a prison had remained a dead letter for reasons that could not be attributed to the applicant. In the Court’s view, in circumstances such as these the State should have either transferred the applicant to a better-equipped prison in order to avoid any risk of inhuman treatment or deferred execution of a sentence that had become tantamount to treatment contrary to Article 3 of the Convention. In its decision setting aside the measure ordering detention at home however, the Rome court responsible for the execution of sentences had failed to take that possibility into account.   Accordingly, the applicant had continued to be detained in Regina Coeli Prison, which the court responsible for the execution of sentences had deemed inappropriate to his state of health. It was not until 23 September 2007 that he had been transferred to Parma Prison, which was equipped with facilities that, according to the Ministry of Justice, could cater for his reduced mobility. The Court considered that it did not have sufficient information to enable it to give an opinion on the quality of those facilities or, more generally, the conditions of the applicant’s detention in Parma. It confined itself to observing that keeping the applicant in Regina Coeli Prison in the circumstances referred to above must inevitably have placed him in a situation that aroused sufficiently strong feelings of anxiety, inferiority and humiliation to amount to “inhuman or degrading treatment”. Accordingly, there had been a violation of Article 3.     ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Press contacts Tracey Turner-Tretz (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 88 41 35 30) Paramy Chanthalangsy (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 54 91) Sania Ivedi (telephone: 00 33 (0)3 90 21 59 45)   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe Member States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. [1] Under Article 43 of the Convention, within three months from the date of a Chamber judgment, any party to the case may, in exceptional cases, request that the case be referred to the 17 ‑ member Grand Chamber of the Court. In that event, a panel of five judges considers whether the case raises a serious question affecting the interpretation or application of the Convention or its protocols, or a serious issue of general importance, in which case the Grand Chamber will deliver a final judgment. If no such question or issue arises, the panel will reject the request, at which point the judgment becomes final. Otherwise Chamber judgments become final on the expiry of the three-month period or earlier if the parties declare that they do not intend to make a request to refer. [2] This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.