TUCALIUC v. ROMANIA
Inadmissible
Branko Lubarda;Ján Šikuta;Johannes Silvis;Josep Casadevall;Luis López Guerra
1. The applicant, Mr Fănică Tucaliuc, is a Romanian national, who was born in 1950 and lives in Bucharest. He was represented before the Court by Ms Diana-Elena Dragomir, a lawyer practising in Bucharest. 2. The Romanian Government (“the Government”) were represented by their Agent, Ms C. Brumar, of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 3. The facts of the case, as submitted by the parties, may be summarised as follows. 4. On 21 October 2003 the National Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office decided to commence a criminal prosecution against the applicant, a colonel in the Romanian army and employee of the Ministry of Defence, for abuse of office and bribe-taking. He was subsequently indicted and on 31 March 2011 the Bucharest County Court convicted him of the above-mentioned crimes and sentenced him to seven years’ imprisonment. 5. The applicant’s appeal against this decision was partially allowed on 2 April 2012 by the Bucharest Court of Appeal which decided to reduce his sentence to five years’ imprisonment. 6. The applicant filed an appeal on points of law (recurs) against the decision of the Bucharest Court of Appeal. Among other requests, he claimed before the High Court of Cassation and Justice (“High Court”) nonpecuniary damage in compensation for the excessive length of the proceedings. 7. In its judgment of 30 January 2014 the High Court took note of the length of the proceedings, acknowledging that it had exceeded the reasonable time requirement and breached the provisions of Article 6 of the Convention in respect of the applicant. It further held that, in order to remedy this situation, the applicant’s sentence would be reduced to three years although the punishment for the crimes of which the applicant was convicted was between five to seventeen years’ and three to fifteen years’ imprisonment respectively. The High Court also mentioned that it was not competent to examine the applicant’s request for non-pecuniary damage arising out of the excessive length of the proceedings but that such a request could be addressed by the applicant to the civil courts. 8. The High Court further decided to suspend the execution of the applicant’s sentence, having in mind the timeframe that had elapsed from the date the crime was committed - a period of time in which the applicant had been of good behaviour and taking into account the fact that he had been held in pre-trial detention for eleven months - a period sufficient for him to understand the gravity of his acts. The elements analysed under the issue of the length of the proceedings were also taken into consideration for this decision. 9. The relevant Romanian legal provisions on the issue of length of criminal proceedings are described in the case of Vlad and Others v. Romania (nos. 40756/06, 41508/07 and 50806/07, §§ 62-63, 68, 70-72 and 75, 26 November 2013).