Постановление Европейского суда по правам человека от 28.05.2009 "Дело "Карягин, Матвеев и Королев (Karyagin, Matveyev and Korolev) против Российской Федерации" [рус., англ.]

rty-one pages, to the Supreme Court for examination.
12. On 14 October 1998 the Supreme Court examined the case. It held that the finding of the applicants' guilt had been corroborated by statements of victims and witnesses, expert reports, the applicants' own statements and other evidence. By a decision of 14 October 1998 the Supreme Court reclassified the applicants' acts in respect of one of the episodes imputed to them as an attempted crime, reduced the amount of the bribe in respect of another episode imputed to Mr Korolev and Mr Matveyev and upheld their conviction in the remaining part.
13. In 2000 the applicants learned that there had been two different copies of the judgment. They asked the Regional Court to send them the judgment from the case file. In October 2000 the Regional Court sent them a copy of the judgment on thirty-one pages. The applicants examined the twenty-seven-page copy and the thirty-one-page copy and identified over 200 differences between them.
14. The applicants complained to the Presidium of the Supreme Court about the discrepancy, arguing that they had based their points of appeal on the twenty-seven-page copy of the judgment while the appeal court had had before it the thirty-one-page copy of the judgment. They requested the court to exercise its power of supervisory review and quash the judgment. The Supreme Court replied to all three applicants that it saw no reason to reopen the case. Furthermore, in its letters of 31 May 2001, concerning the applications for the cases of Mr Karyagin and Mr Korolev to be reopened, signed by a deputy President of the Supreme Court, Mr Verin, the Supreme Court stated that it had been established as a result of the in-house inquiry carried out at the Chelyabinsk Regional Court that the copy of the judgment on twenty-seven pages had been "falsified". It had not been endorsed by the judge Ms Ikryannikova. The Supreme Court further stated in one of its above letters that the argument that the trial court had delivered two different judgments in the case, one of which had been sent to the convicts and the other to the appeal instance, "did not comport with the materials of the case". It stated in the other letter that it could not agree with the submission that the discrepancies between the two copies of the judgment had breached the rights of the defence on appeal.

II. Relevant domestic law

15. Under Article 312 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, in force at the material time, any rectification in a judgment was allowed before the public pronouncement of the judgment.

THE LAW

16. The applicants complained under Article 6 §§ 1 and 3 of the Convention that the fact that the judgment they had appealed against was different from the judgment examined by the appeal court had violated their right to a fair trial.
Article 6 of the Convention, in so far as relevant, reads as follows:
"1. In the determination of... any criminal charge against him, everyone is entitled to a fair... hearing... by [a]... tribunal...
...
3. Everyone charged with a criminal offence has the following minimum rights:
...
(b) to have adequate time and facilities for the preparation of his defence;
..."

A. The parties' submissions

1. The Government

17. The Government submitted that at the time, in the absence of computers and copying machines, judgments had been typed on printing machines either using a carbon paper or typing each copy separately. In the applicants' case the twenty-seven-page copy of the judgment had been typed immediately after the delivery of the judgment with a view to serving it on the applicants within the established time-limit to ensure the proper exercise of their right of appeal. The thirty-one-page copy

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