Endurskoðun á sönnunargildi munnlegs framburðar í sakamálum – Stofnun millidómsstigs

One of the characteristics of Icelandic court practice is that oral testimony is only conducted by the district courts. The Supreme Court has only once practiced oral testimony. Since the Supreme Court is not only an appeal court but also the Supreme Court of the nation, it was considered important to examine whether the decision to convict or acquit was indeed only on one court level in Iceland, when the judgement is based on the evaluation of the evidence quality of oral testimony.In view of the European Convention on Human Rights, the Icelandic judgement procedure was examined in order to study whether the criminal procedures stand up to the requirements stated in the convention. In that respect it was considered whether an appeal was the real option it was intended to be according to the convention.The main result of the study demonstrates that when acquittal judgements were declared in the district courts, the Supreme Court does not have the option to convict the accused, unless it allows oral testimony before its court. In effect, that option has not been chosen; rather the Supreme Court has declared the whole case as invalid and concluded that oral testimony should be conducted again. Whatever the result of the latter conduct of the case before the district court, the evaluation of the quality of the oral testimony, on which a case can depend on, can only been conducted by the court of first instance. On the other hand the Supreme Court has re-evaluated the valuation of oral testimony and acquitted, when a district court has convicted, and it has also confirmed district courts conviction judgements. The Supreme Courts re-evaluation of the valuation of the quality of oral testimony rather appears to take place when it is in favour of the accused. When the Supremes Court’s rectifications only go in one direction, such as may lead to imbalance in the criminal procedures. It may be concluded that this conduct may be in conflict with the European Convention on Human Rights. According to this there is a good reason for the Parliament to assess how this problem may be solved. There have been propositions for setting up an appeal court or that the number of judges at the Supreme Courts will be increased.