CYIL vol. 15 (2024)

CYIL 15 ȍ2024Ȏ CZECH REPUBLIC BEFORE THE EUROPEAN COURT OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN 2023 However, the judgments are also directed within the Court itself and make clear that the Court is only entitled to rule on clearly formulated complaints. The Court cannot, therefore, substitute for the applicant and reformulate or elaborate on their complaints and arguments. Nor may it admit entirely new legal arguments on which the national courts have not had the opportunity to comment. 1.2 The right to life Late last year, the Court issued its judgment in V v. Czech Republic . 19 The Czech Republic was convicted of the violation of Article 2 of the Convention protecting the right to life, both in its substantive and procedural aspects. The case concerned a tragic event that occurred in 2015 in a Czech psychiatric hospital. The applicant’s brother, who had been treated for a long time for paranoid schizophrenia, had been hospitalised in the evening due to aggression. During the night his restlessness increased. In the early hours of the morning, in a fit of aggression, he broke open a washbasin and several doors, pulled out electrical wires and started spraying water from a firehose, beat and strangled an orderly and physically assaulted a female doctor. As the hospital staff were unable to handle the situation with their own forces, they called the police. Two police officers brought the patient to the ground with the help of a mattress, but as they were unable to handle him for a long time, a third police officer used a taser. He used the taser a total of three times. The patient was then able to be restrained and a doctor injected him with a sedative. After turning the patient over onto his back, the nurse found that he was “cyanotic” in the face and had no palpable pulse. Attempts to resuscitate him were unsuccessful. In its judgment, the Strasbourg Court expressed its understanding for the very difficult and dangerous situation faced by the staff and police officers. However, it found fault at a systemic level which caused the police and medical staff to act in a rather spontaneous and uncoordinated manner. The Court reproached the Czech authorities for not adopting any regulations or methodological guidelines governing cooperation and coordination between police officers intervening in hospital settings and medical personnel. In the present case, this resulted in the police officers not knowing that the patient had already been sedated earlier that night and the medical staff not knowing that a taser had been used against the patient. However, the combination of these two measures is very risky. The Court also criticised the fact that Czech legislation does not reflect the health risks associated with the use of a taser and does not contain special provisions for its use against persons with mental disorders and against hospitalised persons who are likely to have been medicated. The Court also took issue with the fact that police officers do not receive special training for intervening against persons with psychosocial disabilities. Finally, the Court expressed doubt that the repeated use of the taser was actually necessary. The Court also addressed the procedural aspect of Article 2 of the Convention, i.e., the state’s obligation to conduct a thorough and independent investigation. The incident was investigated by the General Inspectorate of Security Forces (GISF), in respect of which the Court had previously held that it met the requirements of independence and impartiality. 20 However, it found deficiencies in the thoroughness of the investigation. In the first place, 19 See footnote 3. 20 See two 2022 judgments B. Ű. v. the Czech Republic (no. 9264/15, 6 October 2022) and Sládková v. the Czech Republic (no. 15741/15, 10 November 2022).

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