CEDH · PRESS;GENERAL;ENG — 28 mai 2002

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THE UNITED KINGDOM   In a judgment delivered at Strasbourg on Tuesday 28 May 2002 in the case of Stafford v. the United Kingdom (application no. 46295/99), the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that there had been a violation of Article 5 §§ 1 and 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights (right to liberty and security).   Under Article 41 (just satisfaction) of the Convention, the Court awarded the applicant 16,500 euros for pecuniary and non-pecuniary damage and 17,865.10 pounds sterling for legal costs and expenses.   1.     Principal facts   The case concerns an application brought by a United Kingdom national, Dennis Stafford, who was born in 1933 and lives in Durham.   Mr Stafford was convicted of murder in 1967. He was released early on licence in 1979 and then detained again in 1989 for breach of conditions. In November 1990 the Parole Board recommended his release on life licence which was accepted by the Secretary of State. He was released in March 1991.   In July 1994 he was convicted of cheque fraud and sentenced to six years’ imprisonment. His life licence was revoked by the Secretary of State.   In 1996-7, when normally he would have been released from the fraud sentence, the Parole Board recommended his release on life licence, noting his previous successful transition from prison to the community without violent re-offending. When the Secretary of State rejected the recommendation, judicial review proceedings were taken challenging the lawfulness of the decision to continue detention on the ground, not of risk of violent offences, but the risk that he commit further non-violent imprisonable offences. The House of Lords found that section 35(2) of the Criminal Justice Act 1991 conferred a wide discretion on the Secretary of State and that there was nothing to constrain him from adopting the course which he had. The applicant was eventually released on licence in 1998.   2.     Procedure and composition of the Court   The case was lodged on 24 July 1998 with the European Commission of Human Rights and transferred to the Court on 1 November 1998. The application was declared admissible on 29 May 2001. On 4 September 2001 the Chamber decided to relinquished jurisdiction in favour of the Grand Chamber. A hearing was held on 20 February 2002.       Judgment was given by the Grand Chamber of seventeen judges, composed as follows:   Luzius Wildhaber (Swiss), President , Christos Rozakis (Greek), Jean-Paul Costa (French), Nicolas Bratza (British), Antonio Pastor Ridruejo (Spanish), Elisabeth Palm (Swedish), Pranas Kūris (Lithuanian), Riza Türmen (Turkish), Françoise Tulkens (Belgian), Karel Jungwiert (Czech), Volodymyr Butkevych (Ukrainian), Nina Vajić (Croatian), Matti Pellonpää (Finnish), Kristaq Traja (Albanian), Snejana Botoucharova (Bulgarian), Mindia Ugrekhelidze (Georgian), Vladimiro Zagrebelsky (Italian), judges   and also Paul Mahoney , Registrar .   3.     Summary of the judgment [1]   Complaints   The applicant complained, under Article 5 § 1 of the Convention, that his detention from the expiry of his six-year sentence in July 1997 until his release on licence on 22 December 1998 was arbitrary. He pointed out that by the time of his detention in July 1997 he had long since completed the punitive phase of the life sentence imposed on him for murder. Since his release in 1979, he had spent many years at liberty without re-offending in a violent way. The decision to detain him after the expiry of the six-year term for a dishonesty offence was justified solely by the consideration that, if released on licence, he might commit another offence of dishonesty. This had no relation to the original basis of his detention. He also complained, under Article 5 § 4, that he did not have the right to have the lawfulness of his continued detention decided by a court at reasonable intervals.   Decision of the Court   Article 5 § 1 In the Court’s view, Mr Stafford had to be regarded as having exhausted the punishment element for his offence of murder - if this were not the case, it was hard to understand why the Secretary of State had allowed his release in 1979. When his sentence for the later fraud offence expired on 1 July 1997, his continued detention under the mandatory life sentence could not be regarded as justified by his punishment for the original murder. Nor was the continued detention of Mr Stafford justified by the Secretary of State on grounds of mental instability and dangerousness to the public from the risk of further violence. The Secretary of State expressly relied on the risk of non-violent offending by the applicant. The Court found no sufficient causal connection, as required by the notion of lawfulness in Article 5 § 1(a) of the Convention, between the possibility that the applicant commit other non-violent offences and the original sentence for murder in 1967.   With reference to the Government’s argument that it would be absurd if a Secretary of State was bound to release a mandatory life prisoner who was likely to commit serious non-violent offences, the Court noted that the applicant was sentenced for the fraud which he committed while on release and that he served the sentence found appropriate as punishment by the trial court. There was no power under domestic law to impose indefinite detention on him to prevent future non-violent offending. If there was evidence that the applicant was conspiring to commit any such offences, a further criminal prosecution could have been brought against him. The Court could not accept that a decision-making power by the executive to detain the applicant on the basis of perceived fears of future non-violent criminal conduct unrelated to his original murder conviction was in the spirit of the Convention, with its emphasis on the rule of law and protection from arbitrariness.   The Court concluded, therefore, that the applicant’s detention after 1 July 1997 was not justified and that there had been a violation of Article 5 § 1.   Article 5 § 4 The Court recalled that the tariff (the minimum period to be served by the prisoner to satisfy the requirements of retribution and deterrence) comprised the punishment element of the mandatory life sentence and that the Secretary of State’s role in fixing the tariff was a sentencing exercise. After the expiry of the tariff, continued detention depended on elements of dangerousness and risk associated with the objectives of the original sentence of murder. Those elements might change over time, raising new issues of lawfulness requiring determination by a body satisfying the requirements of Article 5 § 4. It could no longer be maintained that the original trial and appeal proceedings satisfied, once and for all, issues of compatibility of subsequent detention of mandatory life prisoners with the provisions of Article 5 § 1.   The Government contended that the fact that the Parole Board had a power to direct the applicant’s release on revocation of his life licence in 1994 was sufficient in itself to comply with Article 5 § 4. However, the Court noted that the applicant’s life licence was revoked while he was serving a fixed term of imprisonment for fraud. When the fixed-term sentence expired on 1 July 1997, the applicant remained in prison under the life sentence. Though the Parole Board had recommended his release at that date, the power of decision lay with the Secretary of State. In the circumstances of this case, the power of the Parole Board to direct release in 1994 was not material.   From 1 July 1997 to the date of his release on 22 December 1998, the lawfulness of the applicant’s continued detention was not reviewed by a body with a power to release or with a procedure containing the necessary judicial safeguards, including, for example, the possibility of an oral hearing. There had, accordingly, been a violation of Article 5 § 4 of the Convention.     Judge Rozakis and Judge Costa expressed concurring opinions and Judges Zagrebelsky and Tulkens expressed a jointly concurring opinion all of which are annexed to the judgment.   ***   The Court’s judgments are accessible on its Internet site ( http://www.echr.coe.int ).   Registry of the European Court of Human Rights F – 67075 Strasbourg Cedex Contacts:   Roderick Liddell (telephone: (0)3 88 41 24 92)   Emma Hellyer (telephone: (0)3 90 21 42 15) Fax: (0)3 88 41 27 91   The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights. On 1 November 1998 a full-time Court was established, replacing the original two-tier system of a part-time Commission and Court. [1] .     This summary by the Registry does not bind the Court.