期刊名称:Zeitschrift für Internationale Strafrechtsdogmatik
印刷版ISSN:1863-6470
出版年度:2018
期号:6
页码:218-228
出版社:Editors of ZIS
摘要:At first sight, Article 6 of the ECHR seems to guarantee a straightforward right to question witnesses who appear before a criminal court and testify against the defendant. Nothing else about the provision and exercise of this right can be inferred from the wording of Subsection 3 (d).1However, the Court has provided some clarification about the context and intended scope of this right,2 although its corresponding case law is still in the process of develop-ment.3 First of all, the Court has embedded the right to exam-ine prosecution witnesses into the general notion of a fair trial, meaning that this right, as the Court understands it, fulfils some of the functions which must be met pursuant to providing a fair trial in the sense of Art. 6 (1) [I.]. Secondly, the Court has clarified, to a certain degree, the scope of the right to examine witnesses. The right has gained a procedural and a material scope [II. and III.]. Thirdly, the Court has acknowledged some legitimate reasons which can be cited in order to restrict the right to examine witnesses [IV.]. In case of a restriction, since the interests of more than one partici-pant of a criminal trial are impaired, fourthly, the Court re-quires a balance to be struck between the interests of the defendant, the criminal justice authorities, and the other par-ticipants in the trial [V.]. Finally, the violation of the right to challenge witnesses depends on the result of an overall fair-ness test that involves the consideration of all relevant re-quirements [VI.].