HUMAN rights judges will rule this week on the legality of special laws on criminal evidence in Northern Ireland.
On Thursday, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg will examine the practice of excluding solicitors from police interviews with their clients, and a 1988 order allowing courts to read a suspect's silence as a signal of guilt.
The case was brought by Mr John Murray, who was jailed for eight years for aiding and abetting false imprisonment.
After being arrested and held for 48 hours without seeing a solicitor, Mr Murray was cautioned under the Criminal Evidence (Northern Ireland) Order that "adverse inferences" might be drawn if he failed to answer questions. Nevertheless, in 12 subsequent interviews, which his solicitor was not allowed to attend, he remained silent.
At the end of his trial, in May, 1991, the Northern Ireland Lord Chief Justice, sitting without a jury, passed sentence, adding that he was using his discretion under the order to draw adverse inferences from Mr Murray's failure to offer any explanation for his presence in the house, and also from his silence throughout the trial.
An appeal was dismissed in July 1992 and Mr Murray took his case to Strasbourg.
The Human Rights Commission, which advises the full court, has delivered its opinion that the British government has breached the human rights code by restricting solicitors' access to their clients, but not by allowing judges to draw presumptions of guilt from a suspect's silence.