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Erasmus Law Review

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Issue 4, 2014 Expand all abstracts

Willem-Jan Verhoeven Ph.D.
Erasmus School of Law, Department of Criminology, Erasmus University Rotterdam.
Article

Access_open Legal Assistance and Police Interrogation

(Problematic Aspects of) Dutch Criminal Procedure in Relation to European Union and the Council of Europe

Keywords Legal assistance, police interrogation, Dutch Criminal Proceedings, EU Directive
Authors Paul Mevis and Joost Verbaan
AbstractAuthor's information

    This paper discusses the rise of a fundamental issue in Dutch criminal proceedings. The presence of a lawyer prior to and during police interrogations has for a long time been a matter open for debate in the Netherlands. Allowing legal assistance during and prior to police interrogations has been researched on several occasions in the previous century and the beginning of this century. In the Netherlands, one of the most important reasons for not admitting legal assistance was and is founded in the confident reliance on the professionalism and integrity of police officers and justice officials in dealing with the interests of suspects. However, after the Salduz case (ECHR 27 November 2008, Appl. No. 36391/02, Salduz v. Turkey), the Dutch government was compelled to draft legal provisions in order to facilitate legal assistance during and prior to police interrogations. The initial drafts still contained a hesitant approach on admitting the lawyer to the actual interrogation. The EU-Directive of November 2013 (Pb EU 2013, L249) set out further reaching standards compelling the Dutch government to create new drafts. In a ruling of April 2014, the Dutch Supreme Court (ECLI:NL:2014:770) argued that the judgements of the ECtHR were too casuistic to derive an absolute right to have a lawyer present during police interrogation. However, they urged the legislator to draft legislation on this matter and warned that its judgement in this could be altered in future caused by legal developments. The Dutch legislator already proposed new draft legislation in February. In this paper it is examined whether the provisions of the new drafts meet the standards as set out in the EU-Directive as well as by the ECtHR.


Paul Mevis
Paul Mevis is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the Faculty of Law of the Erasmus. He has been a visiting professor at the universities of Münster, Mmabato (South Africa) and in Moldavia, the Ukrain and in Frankfurt an der Oder. Besides his academic activities, Paul Mevis is Honorary Judge at the Criminal Court of Rotterdam and Honorary Judge at the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam, since 1994 and 1998 respectively. He has been parttime Judge at the Court of Arnhem (1990-1994) and is member of the Commission of Supervision of prisons (2006-2008). Paul Mevis is also member of the board of editors of several journals in the field of criminal law and human rights law and commentator for the journal ‘Nederlandse Jurisprudentie’ on criminal cases. He was chairman of the ‘Commissie Strafvordelijke gegevensvergaring in de informatiemaatschappij’ (2000-2001), of which the report has lead to the Bill of the same name. He is a member of the School of Human Rights Research and the Research School on Safety and Security in Society.

Joost Verbaan
Mr. J.H.J. (Joost) Verbaan is an assistant-professor at the Erasmus School of Law of the Erasmus Universiteit Rotterdam. He teaches Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure law. Mr. Verbaan is the Managing Director of the Erasmus Center for Police Studies (ECPS). The ECPS organises courses on criminal and criminal procedure law for law enforcement agencies as well as the prosecution. Mr. Verbaan has been involved in many researches in the practical field of investigation. He has taken part in the research for the Governmental Institute of Scientific Research and Documentation on the effects of the presence of an attorney during the first police interrogation.For the same institute together with professor Mevis he researched the Modalities of Serving in comparative law perspective.He served the secretary of the Committee to draft a new Dutch Antillean Criminal Code and served the secretary of the Committee to draft a new Criminal Code for Aruba, Sint Maarten and Curacao. He served the secretary of the Committee to Draft a common Criminal Procedure Code in the Caribbean regions of Aruba, Curacao , Sint Maarten and the BES-territories. In the republic of Surinam Mr. Verbaan has worked in the legal advisory board of the Committee founded in order to codify a new Criminal Code for the republic of Surinam.
Article

Access_open Legal Advice in Police Custody: From Europe to a Local Police Station

Keywords legal advice, police interrogation, European Union, England and Wales, France
Authors Anna Ogorodova and Taru Spronken
AbstractAuthor's information

    In October 2013, the European Union adopted a Directive, which guarantees, inter alia, the right of access to a lawyer to suspects of criminal offences from the outset of police custody and during police interrogation. However, adoption of the relevant legislation is not sufficient to ensure that this right becomes effective in practice. A range of practical measures will have to be taken by the Member States’ authorities and the legal profession to effectuate the implementation of the right to custodial legal advice. This article aims to identify the practical factors that may influence the implementation of the Directive, based on the findings of a recent normative and empirical study conducted by the authors. The research was carried out in four European jurisdictions (England and Wales, France, the Netherlands and Scotland), and it consisted of analysis of regulations, observations of daily practice in police stations, accompanying lawyers who provided custodial legal advice, and interviews with criminal justice practitioners. The article provides a range of recommendations on the practical measures to be undertaken by the EU Member States and national Bar associations aiming at improving the protection of suspects’ rights in police custody in practice.


Anna Ogorodova
Anna Ogorodova, LLM is PhD researcher at the University of Maastricht.

Taru Spronken
Dr Taru Spronken is Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at Maastricht University and Advocate General at the Supreme Court in the Netherlands.
Article

Access_open Juveniles’ Right to Counsel during Police Interrogations: An Interdisciplinary Analysis of a Youth-Specific Approach, with a Particular Focus on the Netherlands

Keywords legal representation, counsel, juvenile justice, police interrogations, children’s rights
Authors Prof. Dr. Ton Liefaard Ph.D. LL.M and Yannick van den Brink
AbstractAuthor's information

    The right to counsel of juveniles at the stage of police interrogations has gained significant attention since the Salduz ruling of the European Court on Human Rights in 2008. The legislative and policy developments that have taken place since then and that are still ongoing – both on a regional (European) and domestic (Dutch) level – reveal a shared belief that juvenile suspects must be awarded special protection in this phase of the criminal justice proceedings. This calls for a youth-specific approach as fundamentally different from the common approach for adults. At the same time, there seems to be ambivalence concerning the justification and concrete implications of such a youth-specific approach. This article aims to clarify the underlying rationale and significance of a youth specific approach to the right to counsel at the stage of police interrogations on the basis of an interdisciplinary analysis of European Court on Human Rights case law, international children’s rights standards and relevant developmental psychological insights. In addition, this article aims to position this right of juveniles in conflict with the law in the particular context of the Dutch juvenile justice system and provide concrete recommendations to the Dutch legislator.


Prof. Dr. Ton Liefaard Ph.D. LL.M
Prof. Dr. T. Liefaard is Professor of Children’s Rights (UNICEF Chair) at Leiden Law School, Department of Child Law; t.liefaard@law.leidenuniv.nl.

Yannick van den Brink
Y.N. van den Brink, LL.M, MA, is PhD researcher at Leiden Law School, Department of Child Law; y.n.van.den.brink@law.leidenuniv.nl.
Article

Access_open False Confessions in the Lab: A Review

Keywords confession, interrogation, evidence
Authors Eric Rassin Ph.D. and Han Israëls
AbstractAuthor's information

    Intuitively, confession is a strong piece of evidence, because it appears unlikely that a suspect would confess to a crime he did not commit, thereby acting against his own best interest. Surprisingly, experimental studies show that innocent and well-educated individuals do tend to confess falsely when questioned about something they did not in fact do. In this contribution, an overview is presented of the experimental research on confession evidence. Limitations and implications of the scientific insights are discussed.


Eric Rassin Ph.D.
Eric Rassin is Endowed Professor of Legal Psychology at the Faculty of Social Sciences and the School of Law at Erasmus University Rotterdam.

Han Israëls
Han Israëls is Assistant Professor in Legal Psychology at the Maastricht University.