issued by the Registrar of the Court

ECHR 257 (2024)

05.11.2024

Criminal conviction of applicant – a Ministry of Interior civil servant at the

relevant time – for forgery and abuse of office did not violate right to fair trial
In today’s Chamber judgment1 in the case of Miron v. Romania (application no. 37324/16) the
European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:
no violation of Article 6 § 1 (right to a fair trial) of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The case concerned the fairness of criminal proceedings. The applicant alleged that the trial court
which had convicted her had not taken evidence directly from either the witnesses or her
co-defendants.
The Court found that, in the circumstances of the case, and given the applicant’s approach to the
proceedings and the counter-balancing measures taken by the judges adjudicating at both levels of
jurisdiction – who had of their own motion taken evidence directly from the co-defendants and a
particularly important witness –, the courts’ use of a recording of the other witness testimonies in
reaching their decisions was compatible with the requirements of the applicant’s right to a fair trial
and had not impaired the essence of that right. Moreover, the availability of the audio recording in
addition to the written record of those other witness testimonies had, in the present case, been able
to provide an additional safeguard.

Principal facts
The applicant, Adriana-Laura Miron, is a Romanian national who was born in 1977 and lives in
Bucharest.
On 19 December 2012 the Bucharest District Court prosecutor’s office committed for trial the
applicant and four other civil servants from the Human Resources Management Department of the
Ministry of the Interior (“the DGRU”), on charges of forgery and abuse of office. They were accused
of having hired D.R.C. unlawfully and of having paid him for a fictitious job. D.R.C. was also
committed for trial on the charge of aiding and abetting those offences.
In an interlocutory judgment of 4 June 2013 the Bucharest District Court granted an application by
one of the applicant’s colleagues and co-defendants (N.G.) and another co-defendant to be tried
under the simplified procedure governed by Article 3201 of the Code of Criminal Procedure. The
court sentenced those two co-defendants to short prison terms. They then gave evidence as
witnesses in the criminal proceedings against the applicant.
Over three hearings starting on 19 February 2014, the District Court, sitting in a single-judge
formation, took statements from the applicant and the two remaining co-defendants. D.R.C. chose
to remain silent. The court also heard testimony from one of the seven witnesses who had
previously given evidence during the investigation, namely the Secretary of State whose signature
had been forged.

1. Under Articles 43 and 44 of the Convention, this Chamber judgment is not final. During the three-month period following its delivery,
any party may request that the case be referred to the Grand Chamber of the Court. If such a request is made, a panel of five judges
considers whether the case deserves further examination. In that event, the Grand Chamber will hear the case and deliver a final
judgment. If the referral request is refused, the Chamber judgment will become final on that day.
Once a judgment becomes final, it is transmitted to the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe for supervision of its execution.
Further information about the execution process can be found here: www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/execution.
At a hearing on 30 April 2014 the District Court asked the parties to indicate whether they contested
the evidence that had been gathered during the criminal investigation. The applicant stated that she
did not, but that she had doubts as to the truthfulness of her co-defendants’ statements and that
she wished to question the witnesses who had previously given evidence during the investigation.
She requested that written documents and archived video recordings of the entrances to the DGRU
building be admitted in evidence and that a witness be heard, namely the Deputy Director of the
Ministry’s Finance Department. The prosecutor’s office, for its part, requested that the applicant’s
two former colleagues who had previously been convicted give evidence as witnesses. These
requests were granted.
On 14 May 2014, in the presence of a lawyer chosen by the applicant, the District Court, sitting in a
single-judge formation, took evidence from five of the seven witnesses who had previously testified
during the proceedings. An additional witness, for the defence, gave evidence in turn at the
following hearing on 25 June 2014, before a different single judge. From 17 September 2014 until
the end of the first-instance proceedings the District Court, with a new single judge, M.M.O.,
adjourned the hearing twice to enable the applicant to clarify a new request for evidence and to
change lawyer.
At a hearing on 26 November 2014, through the new lawyer she had chosen, the applicant lodged a
fresh request for the production of documents and the calling of two new witnesses. The court
partly allowed the request as regards the documentary evidence and partly dismissed it as regards
the two witnesses, on the grounds that the examination of one of those witnesses was not
necessary for the court to rule on the lawfulness of the recruitment, and that there was no need for
the other witness to testify, because he was the chief of staff for the Secretary of State, who had
already given evidence. The court heard witness testimony from the two former colleagues
(including N.G.) who had previously been convicted. N.G. provided a detailed account of the
instructions given by the applicant and of how the recruitment had been organised. The court also
heard testimony from the seventh and last of the witnesses who had previously given evidence
during the investigation, namely the husband of the applicant’s other former colleague who had
testified alongside N.G. An audio recording was made of the witnesses’ testimony, as the court had
informed the parties. On 21 January 2015, during the oral argument, the applicant repeated her
previous request for evidence. The first-instance court dismissed the request as having already been
examined and as lacking any new grounds.
In a judgment of 24 February 2015 the District Court sentenced the applicant to a suspended term of
one year’s imprisonment for forgery and abuse of office, basing its decision on the full body of
evidence in the case file. It referred several times to the testimony of N.G. (the colleague and
co-defendant) and to the documentary evidence. The court also relied on the statements of other
co-defendants and on the testimony given by the Secretary of State, who had not signed the
memorandum or the order that had led to the recruitment, and by other additional witnesses.
The prosecutor’s office and the applicant both appealed against the judgment of 24 February 2015
to the Bucharest Court of Appeal.
At a hearing on 4 December 2015, in the light of the evidence in the case file and in the presence of
the lawyer chosen by the applicant, the Court of Appeal dismissed as irrelevant the applicant’s
request that documentary evidence should be produced and that the two witnesses whom she had
been refused leave to call at first instance should testify. The Court of Appeal took evidence from the
applicant, who essentially maintained her previous statements, and from her two co-defendants,
one of whom merely referred to her prior testimony. D.R.C. continued to remain silent.
In a final judgment delivered on 14 December 2015 the Court of Appeal, dismissing the appeal by
the applicant and allowing the appeal by the prosecutor’s office, increased her sentence to a two-
year suspended term of imprisonment. In response to the applicant’s ground of appeal concerning
the manner in which the evidence had been taken, the Court of Appeal found that the first-instance

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court had complied with Article 354 § 2 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which prohibited changes
in the bench of a trial court after the opening of oral argument. It also found that unconditionally
repeating the evidence-taking process each time the trial bench changed would be excessively
procedural, would clearly go beyond the legislature’s intention and would delay proceedings without
contributing to establishing the truth. The Court of Appeal further noted that the applicant had
raised that argument only on appeal, whereas she could have requested that the witnesses in
question give evidence when she had been offered the opportunity, if she considered she had
suffered damage in that regard.

Complaints, procedure and composition of the Court

Relying on Article 6 (right to a fair trial), the applicant complained that the criminal proceedings
against her had been unfair because the domestic courts had failed to comply with the principle of
immediacy.
The application was lodged with the European Court of Human Rights on 15 June 2016.
Judgment was given by a Chamber of seven judges, composed as follows:
Gabriele Kucsko-Stadlmayer (Austria), President,
Tim Eicke (the United Kingdom),
Faris Vehabović (Bosnia and Herzegovina),
Armen Harutyunyan (Armenia),
Anja Seibert-Fohr (Germany),
Ana Maria Guerra Martins (Portugal),
Sebastian Răduleţu (Romania),

and also Andrea Tamietti, Section Registrar.

Decision of the Court

Article 6
The Court was called on to examine to what extent the single judge M.M.O., who had taken over the
case and delivered the judgment convicting the applicant at first instance, had taken evidence
directly from her co-defendants and the witnesses; to what extent the applicant had challenged
their credibility; and, lastly, what measures had been taken, both by Judge M.M.O. and subsequently
by the Court of Appeal, concerning the applicant’s approach to the proceedings.
The Court observed that Judge M.M.O., who had taken over the case as a single judge at a time
when the pre-trial proceedings were at a fairly advanced stage, had taken evidence directly from
three witnesses, namely the applicant’s two former colleagues who had previously been convicted,
including N.G., and a third individual. Furthermore, the Court of Appeal in the present case had
taken evidence directly from the applicant and her co-defendants. The reason it had not taken
D.R.C.’s statements was because he had wished to remain silent throughout the proceedings.
The Court noted that the courts dealing with the present case had based their decisions on the full
body of evidence. The reasoning given in those decisions, however, showed that the documentary
evidence had carried significant weight, given that the matter under examination concerned a
recruitment procedure along with statutory and regulatory obligations. Those documents had been
supplemented by witness testimony, notably that of N.G., who had given evidence directly to Judge
M.M.O. Several converging elements pointed to the particularly important role played in the trial by
the detailed testimony of N.G., whom the applicant supervised and had instructed to draft the
documents and to organise the recruitment at issue. It was apparent from the domestic decisions

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that the other testimony, which had not been heard directly by Judge M.M.O. at first instance or
subsequently by the Court of Appeal, had made only a very limited – if not marginal – contribution
to the reasoning of the courts that had convicted the applicant.
The Court further observed that although the applicant had asked, at the very beginning of the
pre-trial proceedings, to put questions to the witnesses and to her co-defendants – which she had
been granted leave to do and had thus been able to examine them freely and with the assistance of
a lawyer of her choice – she had not made any such request once Judge M.M.O. had taken over the
case.
Furthermore, while Judge M.M.O. had twice adjourned the hearing to allow the applicant to clarify
her request for evidence and to change lawyer, the applicant had made no reference in her
subsequent requests to having the previously heard witnesses – not even the defence witness – or
co-defendants give evidence again. She had merely requested that documentary evidence be
produced; and that two new witnesses give testimony, which had been refused in a reasoned
manner. Similarly, the Court observed that the applicant had at no point specified which previously
heard witness or witnesses she would have liked to have give evidence again before Judge M.M.O.
or which aspects she would have thus liked to have clarified. Moreover, she had not asked the Court
of Appeal to take evidence from the witnesses in question again; she had simply repeated the same
request for evidence concerning the calling of new witnesses.
The Court was not, therefore, convinced that the approach to the proceedings taken by the
applicant, who had had several opportunities to request that the witnesses give evidence again, was
motivated by genuine doubt as to the credibility of those who had already testified in the
proceedings, that is, before Judge M.M.O. had taken over the case before the first-instance court.
The Court found that, in the circumstances of the case, and given the applicant’s approach to the
proceedings and the counter-balancing measures taken by the judges adjudicating at both levels of
jurisdiction – who had of their own motion taken evidence directly from the co-defendants and a
particularly important witness, namely N.G. –, the courts’ use of a recording of the other witness
testimonies in reaching their decisions was compatible with the requirements of the applicant’s right
to a fair trial and had not impaired the essence of that right. Moreover, the availability of the audio
recording in addition to the written record of those other witness testimonies had, in the present
case, been able to provide an additional safeguard.
The Court thus held that there had been no violation of Article 6 § 1 of the Convention.

The judgment is available only in French.

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The European Court of Human Rights was set up in Strasbourg by the Council of Europe member
States in 1959 to deal with alleged violations of the 1950 European Convention on Human Rights.