Malkov v. Estonia (no. 31407/07)

The applicant, Deniss Malkov, is a stateless person who was born in 1979 and is currently serving an eight-year prison sentence in Estonia for murder and destruction of property. Relying in particular on Article 5 § 3 (right to liberty and security), Mr Malkov complained about the excessive length of his pre-trial detention. The applicant also alleged violation of Article 6 § 1 in relation to the length of the proceedings. 

With regard to the alleged violation of Article 5 § 3 Court observed that in the present case the authorities mainly relied on a reasonable suspicion that the applicant had committed a serious offence, the fact that he may flee the country as he had done prior to his arrest and the possibility that the applicant may attempt to exert pressure on the victim and or witnesses. The Court recognized and accepted the detention of the applicant was initially justified by the fact the he was indeed under suspicion for a serious crime and left the country and evaded the proceedings for a considerable period of time. As such the Court was satisfied that the grounds for the applicant’s detention were at first both ‘relevant’ and ‘sufficient’. The final criterion to be satisfied was that the national authorities displayed “special diligence” in the conduct of the proceedings here however, the Court found that it could not agree with the Government’s argument that the criminal case was complicated. 

The Court found that the length of the court proceedings and the applicant’s detention in the present case were mainly caused by numerous adjournments of the court hearings due to the difficulties of the authorities in obtaining the presence of witnesses and to the illness of the participants to the proceedings. Furthermore, the court proceedings had to be resumed from the beginning because of the presiding judge’s death during the proceedings and subsequent withdrawal of two judges. What is more, there were considerable delays between the scheduled hearings. From 2005 to 2008 there were five scheduled hearing days per year on an average, about half of which were adjourned. For the aforementioned reasons the Court found that the authorities cannot be said to have displayed “special diligence” in the conduct of the proceedings. As such a violation of Article 5 § 3 was found. 

The claim of a violation of Article 6 § 1 was deemed inadmissible seeing as his sentence was decreased by a considerable amount due to length of the proceedings and in recognition of the violation of Article 6 § 1. Therefore the Court concluded that the applicant had already ceased to be a victim of an alleged violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention within the meaning of Article 34. It followed that this complaint was manifestly ill-founded and was rejected in accordance with Article 35 §§ 3 and 4 of the Convention. As for just satisfaction no claim was made by the applicant for such compensation and as such the Court was not required to pass judgment on this matter.