European Court of Human Rights

WALKER v. THE UNITED KINGDOM

(Application no. 34979/97)

THIRD SECTION¹

DECISION OF 25 JANUARY 2000²

SUMMARY¹

Six-month period – applicability of rule in the absence of Government observations on the issue

Article 35 § 1

Six-month period – Applicability of rule in the absence of Government observations on the issue – Legal certainty

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The applicant was convicted of threatening behaviour likely to cause feelings of harassment, alarm or distress. The Crown Court dismissed his appeal but adjourned the sentence for twenty-eight days pending psychiatric and medical reports. It remanded him in custody for that period, although apparently the conditions for remanding him in custody were not satisfied. The court subsequently imposed a conditional discharge on the applicant. In February 1996 his application for judicial review of the decision to remand him in custody was granted by the High Court, which found that his remand in custody had been unlawful. The applicant’s subsequent request for compensation for unlawful detention was unsuccessful.

Held

Article 35 § 1: The final decision in respect of the applicant’s complaint under Article 5 § 1 was the decision of the High Court in February 1996; moreover, with regard to his complaints under Article 5 § 5, Article 6 and Article 13, the absence of a remedy in respect of unlawful detention should have been apparent to the applicant, who was legally represented, from the time of that decision. The six-month period therefore began to run on the date of the High Court’s decision and, since the application to the Court had been introduced in October 1996, it had been presented more than six months after the final decision. Furthermore, as the six-month rule served the interests not only of the Government but also of legal certainty by setting the temporal limits beyond which supervision by the Convention organs was no longer possible, it could not be set aside solely because the Government had not made a preliminary objection based on it.

Case-law cited by the Court

X v. Austria, application no. 5759/72, Commission decision of 20 May 1976, Decisions and Reports 6

X v. France, application no. 9587/81, Commission decision of 13 December 1982, Decisions and Reports 29

K. v. Ireland, application no. 10416/83, Commission decision of 17 May 1984, Decisions and Reports 38