me Court of the Russian Federation on 27 December 2002. The relevant parts of Article 6 read 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:
...
(c) to defend himself in person or through legal assistance of his own choosing or, if he has not sufficient means to pay for legal assistance, to be given it free when the interests of justice so require."
A. Admissibility
62. The Government submitted that, after the Constitutional Court had confirmed the applicability of the right to legal assistance in the appellate proceedings in its decision of 18 December 2003 (see paragraph 37 above), Russian courts began instituting supervisory-review proceedings with a view to remedying the convicted person's right to legal representation in the appellate proceedings in cases where such representation had been mandatory in accordance with Article 51 of the CCrP (see paragraph 36 above). Accordingly, an application for supervisory review would have been an effective domestic remedy in the first applicant's case.
63. The first applicant replied that in 2007 he had already asked the President of the Supreme Court to institute supervisory-review proceedings on the same ground, but his application had been rejected.
64. The Court has found in a number of cases against Russia that supervisory-review proceedings are not an effective remedy for the purposes of Article 35 § 1 of the Convention (see Berdzenishvili v. Russia (dec.), No. 1697/03, 29 January 2004; and, more recently, Sutyagin v. Russia (dec.), No. 30024/02, 8 July 2008). Moreover, as matters transpired, in the instant case the first applicant did make use of the remedy suggested by the Government but his request was rejected. Finally, the Court notes that the Government did not produce any evidence confirming the existence of an automatic review of final convictions in cases where legal assistance was denied to defendants at the appeal stage. Accordingly, the Court rejects the Government's objection.
65. The Court further notes that this complaint is not manifestly ill-founded within the meaning of Article 35 § 3 of the Convention and that it is not inadmissible on any other grounds. It must therefore be declared admissible.
B. Merits
66. The Government stated that counsel for the first applicant had not applied to participate in the appellate proceedings. The arguments she had put forward in the statement of appeal had been properly reviewed and assessed by the Supreme Court.
67. The applicant maintained that, having regard to the gravity of the charges, the severity of the sentence and his lack of legal expertise, he should have had legal representation at the appeal stage if the proceedings were to be considered fair.
68. The Court observes that the first applicant stood trial on the charge of murder, an offence punishable with up to fifteen years' imprisonment or capital punishment. Article 51 of the Code of Criminal Procedure imposed mandatory legal representation of defendants who faced criminal charges of that gravity (see paragraph 36 above). As it happened, the first applicant was not represented in the appellate proceedings before the Supreme Court, which were conducted by videolink with the remand prison, and his counsel had not been invited to take part in those proceedings.
69. The Court has already examined several similar cases against Russia in which applicants had not been represented during the appeal proceedings in a criminal case. Taking into account three factors - (a) the fact that the jurisdiction of appeal courts in Russia extended to both legal and factual issues and that they wer
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