O\u2019Halloran and Francis v. the United Kingdom [GC], 2007, \u00a7 55; Bykov v. Russia [GC], 2009,\u00a7 104; Ibrahim and Others v. the United Kingdom [GC], 2016, \u00a7 269).<\/p>\n
On the one hand, a conviction must not be solely or mainly based on the accused\u2019s silence or on a refusal to answer questions or to give evidence himself. On the other hand, the right to remain silent cannot prevent the accused\u2019s silence \u2013 in situations which clearly call for an explanation from him \u2013 from being taken into account in assessing the persuasiveness of the evidence adduced by the prosecution. It cannot therefore be said that an accused\u2019s decision to remain silent throughout criminal proceedings should necessarily have no implications (John Murray v. the United Kingdom [GC], 1996, \u00a7 47).<\/p>\n
Whether the drawing of adverse inferences from an accused\u2019s silence infringes Article 6 is a matter to be determined in the light of all the circumstances of the case, having particular regard to the weight attached to such inferences by the national courts in their assessment of the evidence and the degree of compulsion inherent in the situation (ibid., \u00a7 47). In practice, adequate safeguards must be in place to ensure that any adverse inferences do not go beyond what is permitted under Article 6. In jury trials, the trial judge\u2019s direction to the jury on adverse inferences is of particular relevance to this matter (O\u2019Donnell v. the United Kingdom, 2015, \u00a7 51).<\/p>\n
Furthermore, the weight of the public interest in the investigation and punishment of the particular offence in issue may be taken into consideration and weighed against the individual\u2019s interest in having the evidence against him gathered lawfully. However, public-interest concerns cannot justify measures which extinguish the very essence of an applicant\u2019s defence rights, including the privilege against self-incrimination (Jalloh v. Germany [GC], 2006, \u00a7 97). The public interest cannot be relied on to justify the use of answers compulsorily obtained in a non-judicial investigation to incriminate the accused during the trial proceedings (Heaney and McGuinness v. Ireland, 2000, \u00a7 57).<\/p>\n\n
\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Article 6.2 2 Everyone charged with a criminal offence shall be presumed innocent until proven guilty according to law. 3.Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights: to be informed promptly, in a language which he\/she understands and in detail, of the nature and cause of the accusation against him\/her; to have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[345],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23055"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23055"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23055\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23536,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23055\/revisions\/23536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/legalblog.ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}