Inability of the Bulgarian authorities to prevent a woman from being shot by her husband. Violation of the right to life
JUDGMENT
Y and others v. Bulgaria 22.03.2022 (app. no. 9077/18)
SUMMARY
The case concerned the complaints brought by the mother and daughters of a victim of marital
murder. Ms V. was shot dead in a café in Sofia by her husband just after leaving the district
prosecutor’s office to complain that he owned a handgun and she feared for her life. She had made
several similar complaints in the years and months leading up to the killing concerning her husband’s
angry, violent and obsessive attitude towards her.
The Court found in particular that the authorities had failed to respond promptly to Ms V.’s credible
complaints and to carry out a proper assessment of the risk to her in view of the specific context and
dynamics of domestic violence. Had they done so, they would have appreciated that her husband
had posed a real and immediate risk to her life and they could have seized his handgun, arrested him
for breaching a restraining order and/or placed Ms V. under police protection. All such steps to
counter the risk to Ms V. would have been possible under Bulgarian domestic law.
However, the Court found no evidence of complacency towards violence against women either
generally in Bulgaria or in the police’s handling of Ms V.’s case.
PROVISIONS
Article 2
Article 14
PRINCIPAL FACTS
The applicants are Ms Y and her two granddaughters, Ms X and Ms Z. They are Bulgarian nationals
who were born in 1948, 2007 and 2012, respectively, and live in Sofia.
On 18 August 2017 the applicants’ daughter and mother, Ms V., who was sitting on a terrace in a
coffeeshop in Sofia, was shot in the head and torso by her husband. She died on the spot. The
couple had been de facto separated since 2014.
In the two years preceding the shooting Ms V. had complained to the authorities about her
husband’s threatening behaviour, making in total four written complaints to the police. In her first
complaint, lodged in 2016, she alleged that her husband had slashed the tyres of her car after a row
in which he had said “I will not give you a divorce; I will shoot you! I will leave the children without a
mother!”. She also said that she feared for her life as her husband owned a handgun.
After another incident in 2017, when her husband had chased her by car and foot and insulted and
threatened her, the Sofia District Court issued a temporary restraining order barring him from
coming within 100 metres of her. The courts subsequently issued a final restraining order in Ms V.’s
favour.
No criminal charges were brought in respect of either of these two incidents.
The day before she was killed, Ms V. called the national emergency number to report that her
husband was driving behind her car in breach of the protection order and followed this up with a
written complaint to the police. She lodged a nearly identical complaint the next day, a few hours
before she was killed, with the Sofia district prosecutor’s office, specifying again that her husband
owned a handgun and that she feared for her life.
After shooting Ms V., her husband immediately surrendered to the police. He was convicted of
aggravated murder and unlawful possession of a firearm in 2018. He was sentenced to 13 years and
four months’ imprisonment and ordered to pay each of his daughters, who had brought civil-party
claims against him, 250,000 Bulgarian levs (EUR 127,822).
The police immediately opened an internal investigation into Ms V.’s death. The ensuing report,
running to 20 pages, recommended disciplinary action against several officers for neglecting their
duties. It appears that ten officers were punished; three were given a reprimand, but there was no
information about the punishments given to the others.
Relying on Article 2 (right to life), the applicants alleged that the Bulgarian authorities had not taken
their close relative’s complaints about her husband seriously and had failed to take measures to
avert the risk to her life. They also alleged under Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination) read in
conjunction with Article 2 that such failure to take effective measures had not been an isolated
occurrence, but had been because of the authorities’ general complacency towards violence against
women.
THE DECISION OF THE COURT…
Article 2 (right to life)
Ms V.’s four written complaints and the emergency call she made the day before her killing all
amounted to credible allegations of domestic violence as defined in Bulgarian law.
The authorities had not, however, acted upon those complaints immediately and her emergency call
had not been relayed to the police at all. They had in point of fact only responded promptly once –
they had dispatched a patrol when Ms V.’s mother had made an emergency call to report her son-inlaw’s aggressive behaviour towards her and her grandchildren.
Furthermore, even though the courts had found in Ms V.’s favour in restraining-order proceedings,
the temporary order had simply been put on file by the relevant police department, with no steps having been taken to make sure that her husband had complied with it. The final order had not even been brought to the attention of the police.
Indeed, the Sofia police had been concerned solely with the question whether criminal proceedings
should be brought against Ms V.’s husband, without assessing whether his conduct portended any
risk of harm to Ms V. in the special context of domestic violence and its dynamics.
Most importantly, the internal investigation concluded that the Sofia police had taken no steps to
check whether Ms V.’s husband had had a firearms licence or whether he had been in possession of
a handgun. Nor, according to the same investigation, had the police paid any attention to the death
threats as reported by Ms V.
None of those shortcomings had been remedied by the prosecuting authorities, which took their
two decisions not to open criminal proceedings purely on the basis of the written reports by the
police with no coordination between the two prosecutors in charge.
Bearing in mind the restraining-order proceedings and the fact that Ms V.’s husband had breached
its terms, the authorities should have known that there had been a real and immediate risk to her
life. This failure was apparently due in part to lack of training on the dynamics of domestic violence.
Had the authorities carried out a proper assessment, they could have taken any number of steps,
consistently with the powers they had under the domestic law to counter the risk to Ms V.’s life. For
example, they could have seized the handgun that Ms V.’s husband possessed despite the expiry of
his firearms licence, arrested him for breaching the restraining order or placed Ms V. under some
form of police protection.
Moreover, there had not been a proper preventive response involving coordination among multiple
authorities, such as the prosecuting authorities immediately contacting the Sofia police when Ms V.
lodged yet another complaint on the morning she had been killed.
In conclusion, the Court held that there had been a violation of Article 2 of the Convention.
Article 14 (prohibition of discrimination)
As to the applicants’ allegation of general complacency towards violence against women, the Court
noted that there was no evidence to suggest that the Bulgarian authorities tried to dissuade women
from bringing complaints, or that the courts systematically delayed issuing restraining orders or
were unwilling to deal with such cases. There was, furthermore, not enough statistical evidence of
general complacency on the part of the authorities toward such violence.
Nor was there any evidence of such conduct on the part of the police officers or other officials who
had handled Ms V.’s case, and the judicial response to her killing, including a 13-year prison
sentence, had been quite quick and had not been lenient. In addition, there had been an internal
investigation and disciplinary action taken against the police officers.
Lastly, the Court considered that Bulgaria’s refusal to ratify the Council of Europe’s Istanbul
Convention on violence against women was unrelated to any reluctance to provide women with
proper legal protection against domestic violence. In any case, it was not for the Court to give its
opinion on what was a political decision.
The Court concluded that, in the circumstances of the case, there had been no violation of Article 14
of the Convention read in conjunction with Article 2.
Article 41 (just satisfaction)
The Court held that Bulgaria was to pay the applicants 24,000 euros (EUR) in respect of nonpecuniary damage and EUR 4,512.88 in respect of costs and expenses.
