Violation of the right to trial within a reasonable time: Ristić v. Serbia

Abstract

The right to trial within a reasonable time is one of the basic human rights. It is an integral part of the right to a fair trial, which is proclaimed in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The largest number of proceedings before the European Court of Human Rights include involve claims for just compensation due to the violation of the right to trial within a reasonable time. Considering the multitude of similar cases, this paper provides an analysis of the case Ristić v. Serbia (Application No. 32181/08 of 2008), where the applicants filed a criminal complaint under the Serbian Criminal Procedure Code seeking just compensation for the excessive length of judicial proceedings in a case relating to the father's failure to provide maintenance. The case illustrates the court's failure to conduct the proceedings within a reasonable time, which was at the detriment of the juveniles. This case is interesting because the European Court of Human Rights did not consider the right to trial within a reasonable time from the perspective of the defendant, as it usually does in order to protect the due process, but from the victims' perspective by taking into account the interests of the two juvenile victims of crime.

Keywords

• trial within a reasonable time
• failure to provide maintenance
• the European Court of Human Rights