BAKKE v. NORWAY
Inadmissible
Angelika Nußberger;Carlo Ranzoni;Erik Møse;Ganna Yudkivska;Khanlar Hajiyev;Síofra O’Leary
1. The applicants, Ms Britt Bakke (A) and Ms Anna Midttveit Bakke (B), are Norwegian nationals, born in 1954 and 1930, respectively, and living in Steinsland. A is the mother of C, a Norwegian national born in 1983 who was found dead in her apartment on 11 March 2007, and B is the grandmother of C. The applicants are represented before the Court by Mr J.P. Rui, a lawyer practising in Bergen. 2. . 3. In the morning of 11 March 2007 C’s partner found her lifeless body in the shower in their common apartment. He called the emergency service centre at Haukeland University Hospital, requesting help. The phone operator advised him to start performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) and ordered an ambulance to the apartment. When the medical personnel arrived at the apartment they continued to perform CPR, but shortly after their arrival the doctor declared C to be deceased. According to the doctor’s report from the scene there were signs of strangulation on C’s neck and his conclusion was that the cause of death had been strangulation. 4. The Hordaland Police (Hordaland politidistrikt) was called to the apartment. According to their report from that day, C, when they entered the apartment, had been lying naked on the floor in the living room covered with a blanket. It was also noted that her partner had told the police that he and C had been attending a party the night before and had drunk some alcohol. When they had returned to the apartment after the party, they had quarrelled. The quarrel had ended with C going to the bathroom, locking the door and turning on the water in the shower, while he had gone to bed to sleep. The next morning, he had discovered that C was not sleeping next to him in their bed and he had therefore searched for her in the apartment. As she had not been in the living room and the door to the bathroom had still been locked, he had broken up the lock on the bathroom door and found C lying in the shower with the shower hose around her neck. He had not been able to describe how C had been lying there. He had also said to the police that C had been depressed occasionally but that she had never told him that she had wished to commit suicide. The police photographed the scene as well as some marks on C’s neck. 5. On 12 March 2007 the police requested a forensic examination from the Department of Forensic Medicine of the University of Bergen (Avdeling for rettsmedisin). In the report from the examination, which was conducted on 13 March 2007, it was noted that there had been marks on C’s skin around the neck and point-shaped bleedings in the membranes of her eyes, eyelids and on her heart’s surface. The latter injury was thought to have resulted from the resuscitation attempts and it was very unlikely that it had anything to do with the cause of death. It had not been clarified how C had been lying when her partner had found her, but death spots on the front of her right thigh with imprints from the drain on the floor indicated that she had been lying slightly bent forward with the front of the right thigh down to the floor. The report concluded that the likely cause of death was suffocation by hanging. This conclusion was confirmed in an addendum to the report, dated 23 May 2007, which otherwise contained the chemical and microscopical analysis of the examination and showed that C had had 1.2 ‰ ethanol in her blood. 6. Since there was no suspicion of criminal conduct, the police decided to terminate the investigation on 23 July 2007. A requested the police to take further investigative steps to clarify what had happened in the apartment the night when C had died. However, on 14 August 2007, the police notified A that it upheld its previous decision. Nevertheless, C’s partner was formally questioned by the police on 21 September 2007. 7. A appealed to the public prosecutor in Hordaland (Hordaland statsadvokatembeter), which, on 16 October 2007, rejected the appeal stating, inter alia, that further measures would not be useful considering the time that had elapsed since the death. The public prosecutor noted that some investigative measures (for example the questioning of C’s partner) ought to have been carried out at an earlier stage of the investigation and that the photographs taken by the police at the scene should have been added to the case file. 8. On 25 November 2009 a private investigator, whom A had hired to scrutinise the investigation and to carry out further investigative measures, provided a report (which has not been submitted to the Court) where he concluded that it could not be excluded that C had been subjected to criminal conduct. However, since there was no concrete evidence indicating that a criminal act had been committed, he found that C most likely had taken her own life. In his overall assessment, he criticised the investigation, in particular its initial phase, and considered that the police should take further complementary investigative measures. 9. In a lawsuit against the State, brought before the Oslo City Court (tingrett) by A, she requested compensation, claiming police negligence. She stated that the investigation into C’s death had been deficient in several respects. On 26 October 2010 the court rejected the claim, although it acknowledged that some aspects of the investigation had been deficient. 10. On 23 May 2011 the police requested a complementary technical report, asking for a specialist assessment of the existing theories compared to the forensic evidence and other information available in the case. In the ensuing report of 11 August 2011 it was noted that a reconstruction of the scene had been made, from which it had been possible to determine the position of C’s body in the shower. The specialists came to the conclusion that it was possible that C had hanged herself using the shower hose and that there were no indications contradicting that conclusion. 11. Another technical report involving a reconstruction of the scene, dated 6 August 2013 and drawn up by external consultants at the request of A’s lawyer, concluded that it was possible that C had hanged herself in the shower using the shower hose but that it could not be excluded that someone else had strangled her with the hose. The consultants pointed out that the investigation had been deficient and had provided a poor basis for finding a clear result as to the cause of C’s death. 12. On 17 September 2013 A requested the public prosecutor to reopen the case, but on 7 October 2013 the request was rejected. The public prosecutor noted that, even if there were flaws in the initial investigation, the police had carried out several investigations after that point, for example the technical reconstruction of the scene, and since all the results pointed in the same direction, there were no reasons to carry out further investigative measures. A appealed to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP – Riksadvokatembetet), who, on 6 January 2014, upheld the decision. On 13 January 2014 the public prosecutor informed A about that decision. The letter stated that the decision was final but that A could take legal action by instituting private prosecution proceedings.