17 Jul Life imprisonment in accordance with Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights

In the case of Dardanskis v. Lithuania (application no. 74452/13 and 15 other applications, 11.07.2019) the European Court of Human Rights has unanimously decided to strike the applications out of its list of cases. 

The case concerned the applicants’ complaint that their imprisonment for life amounted to inhuman and degrading treatment as they had no hope of release. 

The applicants are 16 Lithuanian nationals who have all been sentenced to life imprisonment and are serving their sentences. In March 2019 legislative changes regarding life prisoners were made to Lithuanian law, allowing a life sentence to be changed to a fixed-term sentence and the prisoner concerned to be released on parole. The legislation also set out the procedure to be used in order to amend sentences, as well as the criteria that a life prisoner has to meet in order to qualify.

Relying on Article 3 (prohibition of inhuman or degrading treatment), all the applicants complained that, at the time they had brought their applications, Lithuanian law had not been amended to bring it in line with the European Court’s case-law on life imprisonment.

Turning to the amendments made to the Lithuanian legislation in March 2019, the Court firstly noted that commutation of a life sentence was by court decision, which the Court found satisfactory. Secondly, it observed that a life prisoner’s situation might be reviewed at the earliest 20 years after he or she had been detained or had started serving the life sentence. This period was shorter than the maximum indicative term of 25 years which the Court had found to be acceptable. Thirdly, a life prisoner could take an active part in the proceedings for the review of his or her life sentence, in which a court had to adopt a reasoned ruling, which could be appealed against. That review contained sufficient procedural guarantees, since both a life prisoner and his or her lawyer had a right to be present in court to argue that the prisoner had reformed.

Fourthly, the Court turned to the criteria which the courts were to take into account when commuting a life sentence. They included in particular the risk of recidivism, the aims of the life sentence and the effect of serving part of the life sentence on the convicted person and the level of implementation of correctional measures.

The Court considered that those criteria were objective enough to allow an effective assessment of whether the person had reformed so as to deserve commutation. One particular flaw that the Court had noted in the previous regime had been that life prisoners had been unable to learn the reasons for the refusal of their pardon requests. That had now been rectified.

The Court thus considered that the life-sentence commutation procedure and its requirements, as very recently adopted by the Lithuanian authorities, constituted an adequate and sufficient remedy for the applicants’ complaint. It concluded that the matter giving rise to the complaint could therefore now be considered to be “resolved” within the meaning of Article 37 § 1 (b). Finally, no particular reason relating to respect for human rights required the Court to continue its examination of the application under Article 37 § 1. Accordingly, the applications were to be struck out of the Court’s list of cases.