Constitutional Court

The Applicant, convicted of murder and firearms violations, filed a Referral pursuant to Article 113.7 of the Constitution challenging decisions of the Peja District Court and the Supreme Court, contending that his rights under Articles 5, 24.2, 30.1, 31.1.4, and 32 of the Constitution were violated because an autopsy report admitted at his trial was in English, depriving the Applicant of an ability to attack the report or use it in cross-examination. The District Court twice rejected a request for a re-trial, and the Supreme Court rejected two appeals of those decisions as ungrounded, The Court held that the Referral was inadmissible because the Applicant both failed to exhaust all legal remedies pursuant to Article 113.7 and, per Article 48 of the Law on the Constitutional Court, to specify the rights and freedoms that were violated. Specifically, the Applicant failed to clarify how an Albanian version of the autopsy report would have created reasonable doubt, noting that the Applicant’s admissions considerably lessened the report’s significance. The Court also noted that the Applicant failed to object at trial either to the use of an English-version autopsy report or the alleged inability to cross examine witnesses regarding the report, and that the Applicant failed to raise those issues in his Supreme Court appeal