Chapter 7 • The Right to a Fair Trial: Part II – From Trial to Final Judgement Consequently, a court may thus, “in dismissing an appeal, ... simply endorse the reasons for the lower court’s decision”.184 In the case of García Ruiz, the applicant complained that the Madrid Audiencia Provincial failed to give him any reply to his arguments. However, the European Court noted that the applicant “had the benefit of adversarial proceedings” and that, at the various stages of those proceedings “he was able to submit the arguments he considered relevant to his case”; thus both the “factual and legal reasons for the first-instance decision dismissing his claim were set out at length”.185 As to the judgement on appeal of the Audiencia Provincial, it “endorsed the statement of the facts and the legal reasoning set out in the judgment at first instance in so far as they did not conflict with its own findings” and, consequently, the applicant could not “validly argue that this judgment lacked reasons, even though in the present case a more substantial statement of reasons might have been desirable”.186 In a case that was examined under article 6(1) and (3)(b) of the European Convention on Human Rights, the applicant complained that he did not have available a copy of the complete written judgement of the first-instance court at the time when he had to decide whether or not to lodge an appeal. The European Court of Human Rights concluded that this failure did not violate the Convention. A copy of the judgement in abridged form was available for inspection at the registry of the Regional Court, and a copy would have been made available to the defence had it so requested; at least the operative part of the judgement was read out in public in the presence of the applicant’s defence counsel. The Court expressed no views on the practice as such in the Netherlands with regard to judgements in abridged form which would be supplemented with an elaborated version only if an appeal was lodged. In the circumstances of the present case it concluded basically that the issues on which the applicant based his defence were addressed in the judgement in its abridged form (a fact that the applicant had not denied) and that it could not therefore be said that the applicant’s defence rights had been “unduly affected by the absence of a complete judgment”.187 3.10.1 The lack of a reasoned judgement and capital punishment cases The Human Rights Committee has consistently affirmed “that in all cases, and especially in capital cases, the accused is entitled to trial and appeal proceedings without undue delay, whatever the outcome of the judicial proceedings may turn out to be”,188 and, as seen above, where the lack of a reasoned judgement had prevented the author from proceeding with his appeal, article 14(3)(c) and (5) was found to have been violated. The violation of these provisions has the further consequence of violating the right to life as protected by article 6 of the Covenant, since, according to General Comment No. 6, it follows from the express terms of article 6 that the death penalty 184 Ibid., loc. cit. 185 Ibid., p. 99, para. 29. 186 Ibid., loc. cit. 187 Eur. Court HR, Case of Zoon v. the Netherlands, judgment of 7 December 2000, paras. 39-51 of the text of the judgment as published on the Court’s web-site: http://www.echr.coe.int/. 188 Communication No. 356/1989, T. Collins v. Jamaica (Views adopted on 25 March 1993), in UN doc. GAOR, A/48/40 (vol. II), p. 89, para. 8.3. 294 Human Rights in the Administration of Justice: A Manual on Human Rights for Judges, Prosecutors and Lawyers