Background
Romels Tovmasyan’s daughter, M. Guloyan, died at her marital home in July 2012. Earlier that day, she had told her brother that she wanted to divorce her husband following frequent arguments about his unemployment and gambling. Relatives of her husband said that she had been found hanging in a bathroom and taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead. An autopsy attributed the death to hanging and recorded injuries to her neck, but omitted photographs required by law. Photographs taken at the funeral showed additional apparent injuries to her neck and hands.
Investigators treated the death as a suicide and twice terminated the criminal investigation for lack of evidence of a crime. The first termination was set aside by the Prosecutor General’s Office because the investigation had not resolved the injuries omitted from the autopsy report or contradictions about when and how the body was discovered. After the investigation was transferred to investigators in Yerevan, it was terminated again in November 2013. Armenian courts upheld that decision, and Tovmasyan complained to the European Court of Human Rights that the investigation had been ineffective.
The Court’s Holding
The Court unanimously held that Armenia violated the procedural limb of Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. Although the authorities responded promptly, completed the investigation and judicial review within two years, and were not shown to lack independence or impartiality, the investigation was not sufficiently thorough to establish the circumstances of M. Guloyan’s death.
The authorities adopted a suicide hypothesis from the outset without examining alternative scenarios. After the Prosecutor General identified deficiencies, investigators still failed to determine when the body was discovered, reconstruct the sequence of events before its arrival at the hospital, reconcile materially inconsistent witness accounts, or explain the injuries visible in the funeral photographs. They also relied on an autopsy previously regarded as doubtful, discarded photographic evidence, and a supposed familial predisposition to suicide despite a psychiatric report that questioned whether M. Guloyan had taken her own life. The domestic courts did not address other disputed matters, including the unexplained presence of alcohol in her body. The Court awarded Tovmasyan EUR 12,000 for non-pecuniary damage and rejected his unsubstantiated claim for costs and expenses.
Key Takeaways
- Article 2 requires a sufficiently thorough official investigation when a person dies in suspicious circumstances, including meaningful consideration of plausible alternative explanations.
- A timely investigation may still be ineffective where authorities leave physical injuries, conflicting witness accounts, missing evidence, and expert findings materially unresolved.
- The Court found no separate failure concerning independence or the applicant’s participation, but held that the investigation’s substantive deficiencies violated Article 2’s procedural limb.
Why It Matters
The judgment underscores that investigators cannot satisfy Article 2 by promptly completing proceedings while committing prematurely to one theory of death. When objective evidence and witness accounts conflict, authorities must pursue those contradictions and explain why relevant evidence supports or undermines the chosen conclusion.
For practitioners, the decision distinguishes procedural speed and family participation from the central requirement of investigative adequacy. Even where domestic remedies provide later access to the file and judicial review, an investigation may violate the Convention if it fails to clarify the core circumstances of a suspicious death.