A person was convicted by the district court of a wide range of crimes, including aggravated assault, unlawful deprivation of liberty and rape of a child. The Court of Appeal convicted the defendant of a few more crimes. The Supreme Court did not grant leave to appeal. After the judgment had become final, the convicted person applied for a new trial.
In the application for a new trial, reference was made in particular to the fact that the prosecutor had been employed by a law firm just a few years before she became the lead investigator in the case. And a senior lawyer at that law firm represented one of the injured parties in the case, both during a previously closed preliminary investigation against the convicted person (which was conducted during the time the prosecutor worked at the firm) and during the resumed preliminary investigation and during the trial.
The Supreme Court has now made the assessment that these circumstances – objectively speaking – must be considered to be likely to undermine confidence in the prosecutor's impartiality and that the prosecutor was therefore disqualified. Since it is not obvious that the conflict of interest has not affected the outcome of the case, a new trial has been granted. The case will now be resumed by the Court of Appeal.
- The rules on conflict of interest are ultimately aimed at maintaining confidence in the judicial system. In order for there to be a conflict of interest, it is not enough that the convicted person lacks confidence in the prosecutor's impartiality, but it is also required that there is – objectively speaking – a basis for the opinion, and in this case the Supreme Court has thus concluded that there was such a basis, says Petter Asp, one of the justices who tried the application for a new trial.
Case No: Ö 5165-23, Ö 3711-23
Case name
“Prosecutorial Disqualification"
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