Constitutional Court

KI68/18, Applicant: Asllan Veseli, Constitutional review of Judgment Pml. No. 175/2017 of the Supreme Court of 29 January 2017, Judgment PAKR. No. 22/ 2017 of the Court of Appeals of 23 February 2017, and Judgment  P. No. 230/2015 of the Basic Court of 3 November 2016

  KI68/18, Resolution on Inadmissibility of 29 October 2018, published on ??. ?? 201?.

Keywords: individual referral, criminal proceedings, equality of parties to the proceedings, manifestly ill-founded

 The Applicant alleges that the challenged judgments violated the rights and freedoms guaranteed by Article 24 [Equality Before the Law], Article 31, paragraph 4 [Right to Fair and Impartial Trial], Article 53 [Interpretation of Human Rights Provisions] and Article 54 [Judicial Protection of Rights] of the Constitution, as well as Article 6 (Right to a fair trial) of the ECHR.

The Applicant claims first of all the violation of the right guaranteed by Article 31.4 [Right to Fair and Impartial Trial], because the regular courts did not allow the hearing of the witness proposed by the defense, which according to the Applicant’s allegations, violates the right to equality of the parties to the proceedings.

The Court noted that the Court of Appeals upon the appeal and the Supreme Court in the request for protection of legality dealt with the issue of equality of the parties to the proceedings, and concluded that “administration of such an evidence is not necessary”, providing a broad legal reasoning for such a stance, which this Court does not find incorrect, arbitrary or discriminatory, which would be to the detriment of the Applicant.

Based on the above, the Court considers that the equality of the parties was not called into question in the present case, as from the challenged judgments stems that the courts dealt with the question which the Applicant deems to have caused a violation of the principle of equality of the parties to the proceedings for which they gave ample explanations in their judgments.

Therefore, the Court concluded that the regular courts had complied with their obligation under Article 31, paragraph 4 of the Constitution and Article 6, paragraph 3, item d) of the ECHR, wherefore the allegations of the Applicant, that the challenged decisions violated the right to fair trial in that segment, are ungrounded.