Brussels, 25/05/2012 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) said on 22 May in a ruling on the forfeiture of the voting rights of a person found guilty of murder (Scoppola v Italy), that it is up to member states of the Council of Europe to decide how to regulate the ban on prisoners voting. This is a statement of principle which does not impinge on a previous Court ruling, in the Hirst case which involved the United Kingdom, in which the Court, ruling against the UK, found that general, automatic and indiscriminate disenfranchisement of all serving prisoners, irrespective of the nature or gravity of their offences, is incompatible with the standards of the European Convention on Human Rights.
In the 22 May judgment, however, the Court ruled that Italy had not infringed the Convention and that the Italian law depriving prisoners of their right to vote contained “no general, automatic, indiscriminate measure”. The Court also noted that Italian law took account of the specific nature of each case and, in particular, the length of sentence. This may be seen as a further call to the United Kingdom to fall into line and was welcomed by MEP Françoise Castex on her Twitter account.
The case on which the ECHR ruled on Tuesday concerned Franco Scoppola, an Italian national, who, after murdering his wife and wounding one of his sons in 1999, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2002. Under the terms of Italian criminal law, the ECHR says in its ruling, his sentence to life imprisonment carried with it a permanent ban on his holding public office, amounting to the permanent loss of his voting rights. Italian law, the Court goes on, provides for automatic removal of civil rights only for prison sentences of five years or more.
Scoppola turned to the Court to try to have his voting rights restored. In 2004, he pointed out that the Court had ruled against the United Kingdom in the Hirst case. In 2009, Scoppola was successful in having rulings delivered against Italy for other points of procedure, including his access to a fair trial, which saw his sentence reduced to 30 years. He was unsuccessful, however, on civic rights, the ECHR ruling on Tuesday 22 May, inter alia, that, while Article 3 of the Convention enshrines the right to vote, that right is not absolute and certain restrictions are possible, for example, when a member state is pursuing the legitimate objectives of strengthening the civic sense of the rule of law and the proper functioning and maintenance of democracy. This objective is proportionate, according to the ECHR, since the forfeiture of the right to vote is not applied to all prisoners in Italy. (SP/transl.rt)