Archive note: This text comes from the old archive of Nomika Epilekta and is preserved with care for historical and informational reading.

By decision 1808/2010, the Court of Cassation rejected the application of a person sentenced to life imprisonment, for violation of the law on narcotics, for reopening of the proceedings that had ended with decision 3327/2008 of the Five-Member Court of Appeal of Athens, although Greece had been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) through decision 54781/16.04.2009 of that court, Kanakis v. Greece.

Specifically, by the above ECtHR decision, it was found that there had been a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), and in particular of Article 6 § 1 of the ECHR, because of the excessive length of the criminal proceedings against the convicted person, which exceeded eleven years.

After the European court found the violation committed against him, the person irrevocably convicted in Greece applied to the Court of Cassation and asked for the criminal proceedings to be repeated, on the basis of the corresponding special provision of the Greek Code of Criminal Procedure (CCP).

The Court of Cassation, however, by the above decision (CCass 1808/2010), held that the application of the irrevocably convicted person, which referred to the excessive duration of the criminal proceedings, was inadmissible and had to be rejected, because neither the applicant invoked nor did it appear that the exceeding of the reasonable time for hearing his case, which the ECtHR had of course found in a binding manner, had a negative effect on the judgment of the criminal judges who convicted him of the felony acts he had committed, see page 1 of the seventh sheet of that decision.

The reasoning of the Court of Cassation decision (CCass 1808/2010) was further supplemented by the thought and assumption that the exceeding of the reasonable time is already a completed fact and cannot be retroactively annulled; therefore, reparation of the damage suffered by the applicant from that exceeding cannot be achieved by reopening the proceedings (CCass 415/2009, 1628/2002).

In other words, the Court of Cassation rejected the convicted person's application because it held that the duration of the criminal proceedings has no significance, that is, that a person may be tried even for the whole of the rest of his life without this having any consequence for the final conviction, which remains unassailable, fair and binding.

Yet this view does not seem persuasive, lenient or fair, but particularly dangerous. For that reason it is open to criticism by any interested citizen, lawyer or non-lawyer, who may formulate objections or argue in favor of this decision, necessarily setting out logical and/or legal arguments, for or against, thoughts, views and versions, and invoking his own sense of justice.