For those who are arguing that the ECHR will bring the McCanns justice, the court ruled that Thompson and Venables, the children who killed James Bulger received an unfair trial and they both received compensation as a result. Do you think justice was delivered in this instance ?
IMO justice was served as the 2 11yr old boys should not have been tried in an adult court, despite the abhorrent nature of their crimes. Current legislation reflects this for 10-17yr olds.
https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1999/dec/16/echr-judgment-thompson-and-venables*snipped*
On article 6(1), the right to a fair trial, the court found that, notwithstanding the special arrangements made to help ensure that the youths could properly participate in the trial process in the Crown Court,
it was highly unlikely that either applicant would have felt sufficiently uninhibited, in the tense court room and under public scrutiny, to have consulted with their legal representatives during the trial or, indeed, that, given their immaturity and disturbed emotional state, they would have been capable outside the court room of co-operating with their lawyers and giving them information for the purpose of their defence". It therefore followed, in the view of the court, that the applicants had been denied a fair hearing in breach of article 6(1).
On the setting of tariffs and their continued review, the court first held that there was a fundamental distinction between the sentence for murder in respect of juveniles and that for murder in respect of adults. As far as the latter—the sentence for adults—was concerned, the European Court, in an earlier judgment on the 1994 Wynne case, had accepted the lawfulness of the mandatory life sentence for adults convicted of murder. It had also accepted as lawful the arrangements for tariff-setting by the Secretary of State.
Today's judgment does not deal with the arrangements for adults who have been, or will be, convicted of murder in the courts in England and Wales. However, in this case, which involves juveniles, the European Court followed a decision by the House of Lords' Appellate Committee of the Privy Council that the setting of the tariffs for juveniles was itself a sentencing exercise. The court added that, as the Home Secretary—who set the applicants' tariffs—was clearly not independent of the Executive, there had been a breach of article 6(1) in respect of the determination of the applicants' tariffs.
On article 5(4), the court held that, because the applicants' tariffs had been decided by the Home Secretary, there had been no judicial supervision incorporated in the initial fixing of their sentences. The court therefore found a violation of article 5(4) based on the lack of any opportunity for the applicants to have the lawfulness of their detention assessed by a judicial body.
