The Incidence of the Annulment Case Concerning the Lack of Defense in a Criminal Trial

The article deals with the cases and the conditions when the regulations concerning the lack of defense of the accused in a criminal trial are applied. The phrase “lack of defense” signifies not only the situation when, in a criminal trial, the accused was not assisted by any pleader, so there was no defense. The same phrase signifies, in an extensive interpretation, the situation when, although the accused had a pleader, his defense was a superficial, not a serious or an effective one. In order to exemplify the interpretations of these regulations, we referred to concrete legal solutions both from the Romanian jurisprudence, especially the Supreme Court decisions, and from the European Court of Human Rights jurisprudence. The conclusion is that the right to defense is of the utmost importance in a criminal trial, and the infringement of these regulations must entail the annulation of the decisions pronounced with the violation of the fundamental right to defense.