ABSTRACT
The period to be taken into consideration regarding the alleged A 5(3) violation was 2 years 4 months 15 days (1 July 1980 to 16 November 1982). ‘Conviction’ in A5(1)(a) signified both a finding of guilt and the imposition of a penalty. The word ‘after’ required both a chronological (detention must follow conviction in time) and causal (detention must result from, follow and depend upon or occur by virtue of conviction) condition. The cause of the continuation of the applicant’s detention on remand lay in the conviction: if there had been no conviction he would have been released. A person convicted and detained pending appeal could not be considered to be detained ‘for the purpose of bringing him before the competent legal authority on reasonable suspicion of having committed an offence’. There are differences between Contracting States on the question of whether a person convicted has started serving his sentence while an appeal is pending and therefore the guarantees of A 5(3) should not be made dependent on any one particular national situation. The persistence of reasonable suspicion that the person arrested committed the offence is a condition sine qua non for the validity of continued detention. However, after a certain lapse of time it was no longer sufficient and the Court had to examine the grounds which persuaded the judicial authorities to decide detention should be continued. The case was complex and the judge had showed diligence, the length of detention was not unreasonable. Regarding the length of the proceedings (A 6), the period was from the date of arrest, 1 July 1980, to the final decision, five years, five months, 18 days. Although the case was complex, all evidence had been gathered and a decision made, yet the judge did not complete his judgment until 33 months after the pronouncement. Although the judge’s workload had been lightened and disciplinary proceedings taken against him, those measures were insufficient and too belated to ensure proceedings were concluded in a reasonable time.
