The Government noted that after 1 January 2004 the examination of the applicant's case continued with the participation of the above lay judges in accordance with Article 242 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of Russia which provided for the principle of invariance of the court's composition throughout the trial. Besides, by 1 January 2004 almost all the witnesses in the applicant's case had been questioned, and the applicant had remained in custody for four years. Therefore, the interests of justice and the interests of the applicant himself called for the continuation of the proceedings by the same court. Otherwise a differently composed court would have been obliged to restart the trial from the very beginning. The Government concluded, therefore, that there had been no interference with the applicant's right under Article 6 § 1 of the Convention to have the criminal charge against him determined by a tribunal established by law.
2. The applicant
92. The applicant disputed the arguments put forward by the Government. He referred, firstly, to Section 6 of the Lay Judges Act, which outlined the procedure for the selection of the lay judges for the examination of cases by regional (city) courts. In particular, the above provision stipulated that the president of the relevant court in accordance with the rules set out by Section 5 of the Act (that is by drawing random lots) was to select the lay judges for the examination of cases by the relevant regional (city) court. Such a selection was to be carried out on the basis of the general lists of lay judges of the district courts situated on the territory of the relevant region (city). The selection of lay judges for examination of a particular case in a regional (city) court was to be carried out by the judge to whom the case in question had been assigned in accordance with the rules set out by Section 5 of the Act. In pursuance of the enforcement of Section 5 of the Act the Presidium of the Supreme Court on 14 January 2000 clarified that the selection of the lay judges was to be carried out by the president of the relevant court by drawing random lots among the lay judges on the general list(s). The number of lay judges selected for each judge should be equal to 156.
93. Turning to the facts of his case, the applicant submitted that on 27 September 2002 the acting president of the St Petersburg City Court instead of selecting the lay judges from the general lists of all the district courts of St Petersburg had selected them on the basis of the general list of only one district court - the Krasnogvardeyskiy District Court of St Petersburg. Besides, the total number of the selected lay judges was 102, whereas there should have been 156 names selected for each judge of the court. Moreover, the selected 102 lay judges were not distributed between the judges of the City Court. Therefore, when it came to the selection of the two lay judges for a particular case it would have been impossible for the judge to whom the case had been assigned to determine which lay judges would take part in the drawing of lots. The applicant further submitted that on 11 November 2002 Judge Kurguzov "drew lots" between six unidentified lay judges, and therefore it is impossible to verify whether the remaining four persons had had the status of lay judges and had been on the relevant lists of lay judges. The anonymity of those four participants of the drawing of lots therefore does not allow determination of the lawfulness of the selection of lay judges Ms D. and Mr S. by Judge Kurguzov.
94. The applicant further argued that after 1 January 2004 the participation of lay judges Ms D. and Mr S. in his trial had been unlawful since starting from the above date there had ceased to exist any basis in the domestic law for their further involvement in the proceedings.
B. The Court's assessment
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