GIULIANI AND GAGGIO v. ITALY JUDGMENT
83
examinations because of the cremation of the body (see paragraph 264
above).
315. The Court accepts that giving notice of an autopsy scarcely three
hours before the beginning of the examination (see paragraph 48 above)
may make it difficult in practice, if not impossible, for injured parties to
exercise their power to appoint an expert of their choosing and secure the
latter's attendance at the forensic examinations. The fact remains, however,
that Article 2 does not require, as such, that the victim's relatives be
afforded this possibility.
316. It is also true that, where an expert medical examination is of
crucial importance in determining the circumstances of a death, significant
shortcomings in the conduct of that examination may amount to serious
failings capable of undermining the effectiveness of the domestic
investigation. The Court reached that conclusion, in particular, in a case
where, following allegations that the death had been the result of torture, the
autopsy report, signed by doctors who were not forensic specialists, had
failed to answer some fundamental questions (see Tanlı, cited above,
§§ 149-154).
317. The present case, however, differs significantly from Tanlı.
Moreover, the applicants did not provide evidence of any serious failings in
the autopsy performed on Carlo Giuliani. It was not alleged, either, that the
forensic experts had failed to establish the cause of death with certainty; the
applicants did not contest before the Court the domestic authorities'
conclusion that Carlo Giuliani had died as a result of the shot fired by M.P.
318. The applicants stressed that the forensic experts had omitted to
extract and record a fragment of bullet which, according to the results of the
scan performed on the body, was lodged in the victim's head (see
paragraph 266 above). The Court notes that Mr Salvi, one of the experts,
explained at the “trial of the twenty-five” that the fragment had been very
small and very difficult to find because of the damage to the brain tissue and
the large amount of blood present. It had been regarded as a “minor detail”
and the search for it had been discontinued (see paragraph 130 above).
319. The Court does not consider it necessary to assess the pertinence of
this explanation. For the purposes of examining the applicants' complaint, it
simply observes that the fragment in question might have served to shed
light on the trajectory of the fatal bullet (and in particular whether it had
been deflected by another object before hitting Carlo Giuliani). However, as
the Court has just noted in relation to the substantive aspect of Article 2 (see
paragraphs 192-193 above), the use of force would have been justified
under this provision even if the “intermediate object theory” had been
dismissed. It follows that the metal fragment in question was not crucial to
the effectiveness of the investigation. Moreover, the Court observes that the
cremation of Carlo Giuliani's body, which made any further expert medical
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