European Court of Human Rights
23 April 2024
Facts
The applicant, Mr. Sacharuk, was convicted because of abuse of office and of unlawful use of an official document because he had used another parliamentarian’s identity card to vote in parliament on his behalf.
Complaint
Mr. Sacharuk complained that the Supreme Court panel which upheld his conviction in 2018 had not been impartial. He also complained that he was the first parliamentarian who had ever been convicted for voting in the place of another member of the Seimas, as up until then this had been the “tradition” or working practice, and that he could not therefore have foreseen that he would be convicted, in breach of Article 7 (no punishment without law).
Court’s ruling
The Court reiterated that impartiality normally denotes the absence of prejudice or bias and its existence or otherwise can be tested in various ways. According to the Court’s settled case-law, the existence of impartiality for the purposes of Article 6 § 1 must be determined according to a subjective test where regard must be had to the personal conviction and behaviour of a particular judge, that is, whether the judge held any personal prejudice or bias in a given case.
The Court found that the Supreme Court had not freshly examined the case in its second set of proceedings brought against Mr. Sacharuk. As a result, his concern that the judge who sat on the bench in both sets of proceedings might have a preconceived view of his guilt had been legitimate, and his doubts as to the impartiality of the Court had been justified. Therefore, his request for that judge to be replaced should have been accepted. The Court ruled that there has been a violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.
The voting practices were known to Lithuanian authorities, which had been in breach of the single vote principle. Thus, the Court could not treat voting for other members of the parliament as ‘tradition’. The applicant had acted with direct intent, having understood the dangerous nature of his actions; he had not only life experience and professional experience at the Seimas, but also a law degree; before he had worked as a police commissioner and an advocate. He did not contest the factual circumstances regarding his actions – having registered and voted in place of another member six times, only contesting whether those actions had caused major damage to the State.
The Court found that Mr. Sacharuk could have foreseen that his acts would constitute an offence under the criminal law applicable at the time. Thus, there was no violation of Article 7.