22 NEUMEISTER v. AUSTRIA JUDGMENT Attempting to form a "tentative opinion" of the sentence to be expected by the Applicant in case of conviction, the Commission observes that: - section 203 of the Criminal Code provides for a sentence of five to ten years’ penal servitude; - the parties argued before it whether there was any proportion between the sentences that might be imposed and the damage caused by each of the accused in this case; but it does not propose to express any opinion on the matter; - Austrian legislation allows the courts to pass sentences lower than the usual minimum, provided there are extenuating circumstances. In view more particularly of this last possibility, of which Austrian courts are said to make plentiful use in practice, the Commission considers that the length of Neumeister’s detention is close to the likely sentence in case of conviction. It also observes that under Section 55 (a) of the Austrian Criminal Code, the period of detention is as a rule to be counted as part of the sentence. However, the Commission does not view this as a factor likely to affect the judgment, in the light of the second criterion, as to whether the length of detention is reasonable; in this connection it stresses the uncertainty in which the prisoner has to live pending judgment. All in all, therefore, application of the second criterion is thought to indicate that the Applicant’s detention lasted longer than was reasonable. 7. The third criterion is said to point the same way, since Neumeister suffered professionally and financially to an unusual degree as a result of his detention. 8. With regard to the fourth criterion, the Commission finds that the Applicant does not appear to have prolonged the investigation unduly by his attitude. Of course he did not help shorten it, either, since he continually protested his innocence, but in doing so he was entirely within his rights. Neither does the Commission consider that the fact that he lodged a series of applications and availed himself of other remedies, in accordance with the law, indicates any intention on his part to delay proceedings abusively. His actions may, to be sure, have interrupted or slowed down the work of the Investigating Judge and the Public Prosecution by obliging them to forward the case record to the competent courts, but the Commission points out that there are in such cases technical means of ensuring uninterrupted work on the prosecution - for instance by making copies of the necessary documents. 9. In the Commission’s view, the case in question was an exceedingly complicated one by reason of the nature, range and multiplicity of the transactions in question, their foreign ramifications and the number of accused and witnesses. Thus the fifth criterion would seem to justify a long period of detention. The Commission thinks however that the continued holding of Neumeister in detention cannot be explained by the difficulties of the preliminary investigation after it had been closed on 4 November 1963.