The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruled on Thursday that the Czech Republic discriminated against a juvenile defendant by not affording him the same pre-trial detention review period granted to adults. This judgment in the case of Spišák v. the Czech Republic underscores the differential treatment experienced by juveniles during pre-trial detention.
The applicant, who was initially detained at age 17 on suspicion of robbery and grievous bodily harm, faced a legal battle when the Prague Municipal Court rejected his challenge to the detention. The court based its decision on the potential risk of re-offending, as outlined in Article 67(c) of the Czech Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP).
Article 72 of the CCP requires a periodic judicial review of pre-trial detention every three months. However, this review was not applied in Spišák’s case due to a specific rule (lex specialis) restricting the maximum duration of juvenile detention to six months. This decision was upheld by the Czech Constitutional Court, leading the applicant to exhaust all domestic remedies before bringing the case to the ECHR.
The ECHR found that Articles 5 and 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights were violated, focusing on the rights to liberty and security and the protection against discrimination. The court emphasized that pre-trial detention for minors should only be a measure of last resort and noted that shorter judicial reviews are appropriate for juvenile defendants.
The court’s ruling identified discriminatory practices in the interpretation of the laws applied by the Czech Republic. The differential treatment between adults, who received judicial reviews every three months, and minors, who had to wait six months, was deemed unjustifiable. The Czech Government’s inability to substantiate this variance led the ECHR to side with the applicant, ordering compensation for the discriminatory treatment. According to ECHR, this differential treatment created clear discrimination against juveniles.
Under Article 46 of the European Convention on Human Rights, state parties must abide by the ECHR’s final judgments, making this decision binding on the Czech Republic, which must now seek to rectify this legislative disparity.
More details on this case can be found at JURIST – News.