s the alleged lack of an adequate opportunity to examine S. or have him examined, in particular on account of the alleged lack of any reasonable effort on the part of the national authorities to ensure S.'s presence at the trial.
73. It is uncontested between the parties that the applicant pleaded not guilty throughout the proceedings and that his conviction on two counts of theft was based, to a decisive extent, on S.'s pre-trial deposition. In finding the applicant guilty of two thefts, the trial court relied on this deposition and referred to various statements by the employees of the private companies from which the thefts had been committed. Those statements, however, only concerned the assessment of the pecuniary damage caused by the thefts. The court also listed several items of "other physical evidence" including the record of the crime scene description and the articles stolen, without any further discussion of their probative weight.
74. The Court's case-law under Article 6 § 3 (d) of the Convention requires that a defendant be given an adequate opportunity to examine, or have examined, a witness at some stage of the proceedings, and it is preferable for such examination to take place in the course of adversarial proceedings before an independent and impartial tribunal.
75. The Court notes in that connection that S. not only admitted the charges but named the applicant as his accomplice and gave a detailed account of the applicant's and his own role in the commission of the thefts. In the Court's opinion, there is a considerable risk that a co-accused's statement may be unreliable, given his or her obvious interest in diverting blame from himself to another person. Thus, a higher degree of scrutiny may be required for assessing such a statement, because the position in which accomplices find themselves while testifying is different from that of ordinary witnesses. They testify without being under oath, that is, without any affirmation of the truth of their statements which could render them punishable for perjury for wilfully making untrue statements (see Vladimir Romanov v. Russia, No. 41461/02, § 102, 24 July 2008).
76. The Court further notes that S. made his initial statement to an investigating authority (an inquirer or an investigator). Neither the applicant nor his counsel was present during that interview. Nothing in the case file suggests that S.'s statement was recorded on video so that the applicant and the trial court could observe his demeanour under questioning and thus form its own impression of his reliability (see, by contrast, Accardi and Others v. Italy (dec.), No. 30598/02, ECHR 2005-...).
77. At the same time, the Court found no factual basis in support of the applicant's allegation that S. had concluded any agreement with the prosecution, for instance in the form of a plea bargain (see Erdem v. Germany (dec.), No. 38321/97, 9 December 1999).
78. Bearing the above factors in mind, the Court considers that before admitting S.'s statement in evidence it was incumbent on the national court to assess what impact the absence of the co-accused, who was also the putative key witness against the applicant, might have on the fairness of the trial. The national courts' analysis in the present case was limited to stating that S.'s absence at the trial was counterbalanced by the fact that the applicant had had a previous opportunity to question him during the pre-trial face-to-face confrontation (see paragraph 38 above).
79. Having regard to its previous jurisprudence on the matter (see paragraphs 67 - 69 above), the Court observes that the applicant was not assisted by counsel during the confrontation, apparently, because counsel had not been summoned to it. The Court has previously underlined the importance of the investigation stage for the preparation of the criminal proceedings, a
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