JORDAN proti Spojenému království

FOURTH SECTION

DECISION

Application no. 48066/21
Teresa JORDAN
against the United Kingdom

The European Court of Human Rights (Fourth Section), sitting on 31 May 2022 as a Committee composed of:

Faris Vehabović, President,
Tim Eicke,
Pere Pastor Vilanova, judges,
and Ilse Freiwirth, Deputy Section Registrar,

Having regard to:

the application (no. 48066/21) against the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland lodged with the Court under Article 34 of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (“the Convention”) on 27 September 2021 by an Irish national, Ms Teresa Jordan, who was born in 1944 and lives in Belfast (“the applicant”) and who was represented by Mr F. Shiels, a lawyer practising in Belfast with Madden & Finucane Solicitors;

Having deliberated, decides as follows:

SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE

1. This application, like that of Hugh Jordan v. the United Kingdom, no. 24746/94, 4 May 2001, concerns the investigation into the death of Pearse Jordan, who was shot and killed by an officer of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (“the RUC”) in 1992, when he was 22 years old (see Hugh Jordan, cited above, §§ 12-27). The applicant is the mother of Pearse Jordan and the widow of Hugh Jordan.

2. Following the shooting, the RUC conducted an investigation, on the basis of which the Department of Public Prosecutions (“the DPP”) decided not to prosecute any officer. A Coroner’s inquest commenced on 4 January 1995 and was adjourned later that month. The inquest was still pending in 2001, when the Court first considered the effectiveness of the investigation under the procedural limb of Article 2 of the Convention (see Hugh Jordan, cited above, §§ 28-54). In finding a violation of the procedural limb of Article 2, the Court identified a number of shortcomings, including that the inquest proceedings did not commence promptly and were not pursued with reasonable expedition (see Hugh Jordan, cited above, §§ 142-45). The Court awarded Mr Jordan GBP 10,000 in just satisfaction (see Hugh Jordan, cited above, § 171).

1. Steps taken following the Court’s judgment

3. A second inquest into the death of Pearse Jordan commenced on 24 September 2012. A verdict was given on 26 October 2012.

4. Mr Jordan brought three judicial review applications challenging various aspects of the second inquest by reference to Article 2 of the Convention. He also sought a declaration that the delay in commencing the inquest was incompatible with Article 2. The High Court quashed the verdict of the second inquest and held that the Police Service of Northern Ireland (“the PSNI”, which had replaced the RUC) had delayed its progress in breach of the Article 2 procedural requirement (see In the matter of three Applications by Hugh Jordan for Judicial Review [2014] NIQB 11). It awarded Mr Jordan GBP 7,500 in compensation (see Jordan’s and five other Applications [2014] NIQB 71).

5. The Court of Appeal affirmed the order quashing the second inquest verdict and ordered that a further inquest be heard (see In the matter of three Applications by Hugh Jordan for Judicial Review [2014] NICA 76). An appeal by the Chief Constable against the award of damages was stayed pending conclusion of the third inquest.

6. The third inquest commenced on 7 February 2016 and concluded on 21 April 2016. The verdict was the subject of an unsuccessful judicial review challenge by the applicant (see Re Teresa Jordan’s Application [2017] NIQB 135) and an unsuccessful appeal (see In the matter of an Application by Teresa Jordan for Leave to Apply for Judicial Review [2018] NICA 34).

7. In 2019 the Court of Appeal reduced the award of damages against the PSNI to GBP 5,000 (see Teresa Jordan v. Police Service of Northern Ireland [2019] NICA 61). In its view, the only culpable delay on the part of the PSNI arose between March 2007 and May 2008.

8. On 29 March 2021 the Supreme Court refused the applicant’s application for leave to appeal.

2. The proceedings before the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe

9. In March 2021 the Committee of Ministers decided to close its examination of the Hugh Jordan case. In its final resolution, dated 9 March 2021, it considered that the question of individual measures was resolved, “given that the respective inquest proceedings and related litigation have concluded; the coroner had, where applicable, referred the cases to the Director of Public Prosecutions (Northern Ireland) for a decision on prosecution; and it was open to the applicants to bring a judicial review should the DPP(NI) decide that no further prosecution should be brought”. It further recalled that the question of general measures continued to be examined within the framework of the “McKerr” group of cases (a group of cases concerning the investigations into killings by the security services in Northern Ireland during “the Troubles”).

10. A memorandum of 11 March 2021 prepared by the Department for the Execution of Judgments noted that “[t]he applicant has not contacted the Committee of Ministers with any concerns related to the individual measures since November 2012 (see DH-DD(2013)346) ... ”.

3. Complaints

11. The applicant complains that there has been a violation of her entitlement under the procedural limb of Article 2 to a prompt hearing of the inquest into her son’s death due to the delay occurring between the Court’s 2001 judgment and the conclusion of the third inquest in 2016; and that as the award of GBP 5,000 did not represent just satisfaction for the unwarranted delay, there has also been a breach of her right to an effective remedy under Article 13 of the Convention.

THE COURT’S ASSESSMENT

12. The Court does not have jurisdiction to verify whether a Contracting Party has complied with the obligations imposed on it by one of the Court’s judgments. It has therefore refused to examine complaints concerning the failure by States to execute its judgments, declaring such complaints inadmissible ratione materiae unless a new issue is raised which was undecided in the earlier judgment (see Egmez v. Cyprus, no. 12214/07, §§ 50‑51, 18 September 2012; see also Moreira Ferreira v. Portugal (no. 2) [GC], no. 19867/12, § 47, 11 July 2017). The determination of the existence of a “new issue” very much depends on the specific circumstances of a given case (see Egmez, cited above, § 54 and Moreira Ferreira, cited above, § 47).

13. According to the Court, the specific requirements of the Article 2 duty to investigate should be considered jointly and not in a piecemeal and incremental fashion. When an application is lodged, it will usually fall to the Court, at the point at which it examines the complaints, to carry out a global assessment of the investigation which has taken place to date by reference to the essential parameters identified in its case-law. Should it find a violation of the procedural obligation under Article 2 of the Convention it will be for the Committee of Ministers, acting under Article 46 of the Convention, both to address the issue of what – in practical terms – may be required of the respondent Government to ensure compliance with that obligation, and to supervise the measures taken to remedy the violation (see Gribben v. the United Kingdom (dec.), no. 28864/18, §§ 117 and 121, 25 January 2022). This is especially so in the specific context of Northern Irish legacy inquest cases, which at the domestic level have become something of an “adversarial battleground” in which it is neither desirable nor appropriate for the Court to act as a further appellate court, addressing each and every challenge to the inquest procedure as and when it arises (see Gribben, cited above, § 120).

14. In the present case the Court, in its 2001 judgment, carried out a global assessment of the investigation which had taken place and identified a number of shortcomings, including the fact that investigation had not been carried out promptly and with reasonable expedition (see paragraph 2 above). The execution of that judgment was subject to supervision by the Committee of Ministers, which took into account all the subsequent domestic proceedings before it closed its execution of the case in 2021 (compare, for example, Verein gegen Tierfabriken Schweiz (VgT) v. Switzerland (no. 2) [GC], no. 32772/02, § 67, ECHR 2009). While it is regrettable that eleven years elapsed between the Court’s 2001 judgment and the commencement of the second inquest, in view of the fact that the Court has already found a violation of the procedural limb of Article 2, which included a finding that the investigation was neither commenced promptly nor carried out with reasonable expedition, it does not have jurisdiction to now re-examine the issue of investigative delay.

15. In this regard, the present application is readily distinguishable from that of Gribben. In Gribben the applicant had originally made a number of different complaints to the Court about the conduct of the investigation into her brother’s death. The Court, however, dealt only with the complaint concerning the promptness of the investigation in its first judgment since it considered the remaining complaints to be premature. Nonetheless, it informed the applicants that if they were dissatisfied in the future with the progress or outcome of the ongoing domestic procedures it would be open to them to reintroduce their other complaints under the substantive and procedural aspects of Article 2 of the Convention (see McCaughey and Others v. the United Kingdom, no. 43098/09, § 128, ECHR 2013). As such, on the particular facts of that case the Court accepted that a further application, in which the applicant made five specific complaints about the conduct of the subsequent inquest, none of which related to its promptness, concerned new aspects which it had not covered in its previous judgment (see Gribben, cited above, § 122). No such “new aspects” or “issues” arise on the facts of the case at hand.

16. In any event, unlike the applicant in Gribben, the applicant in the present case succeeded before the domestic courts in obtaining both an acknowledgement of, and compensation for, the violation she now complains of before this Court. Although she contends that the award of GBP 5,000 did not represent just satisfaction for the delay, there is no obvious dissonance between this amount, based on the finding that there had been a period of approximately fourteen months’ culpable delay attributable to the PSNI, and the award of GBP 10,000 made by the Court in 2001 to cover all the investigation’s shortcomings, including, but not limited to, its lack of promptness.

17. In light of the foregoing, the Court finds that it has no jurisdiction to examine the applicant’s complaint under the procedural limb of Article 2, read alone or together with Article 13 of the Convention. As such, the application is incompatible ratione materiae with the provisions of the Convention within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 (a) and must be rejected in accordance with Article 35 § 4.

For these reasons, the Court, unanimously,

Declares the application inadmissible.

Done in English and notified in writing on 23 June 2022.

Ilse Freiwirth Faris Vehabović
Deputy Registrar President