Use of Telephone Surveillance in Criminal Proceedings - Requirements for the Documentation of Evidence Collection

Facts

The appellant X. was convicted by the District Court of Laufenburg of serious drug trafficking and sentenced to 11 years' imprisonment and a fine. The High Court of the Canton of Aargau largely upheld the judgment. X. then filed a constitutional appeal with the Federal Supreme Court for violation of his right to be heard and to a fair trial.

Considerations

The Federal Supreme Court upheld the appeal. It stated that, regardless of cantonal procedural law, the production of evidence for the accused must be comprehensible. The right to be heard implies that the modalities of the creation of the evidence, here the transcripts of the telephone surveillance conducted in the Albanian language, must be documented in the files. In particular, it must be evident who prepared and translated these transcripts and whether the persons involved were instructed about the criminal consequences of false translations.

Since the files did not contain any information on this, the use of this…