BERNARD JUDGMENT OF 23 APRIL 1998 12 relating to the content of the psychiatric experts’ reports and ask for these to be ruled inadmissible on the ground that they infringed the principle of the presumption of innocence. Moreover, if the Indictment Division had refused such a request, they could also have appealed to the Court of Cassation against the decision to commit their client for trial. However, no challenge was made. Lastly, before the Assize Court the applicant had made an interlocutory application for a formal note to be entered in the record, but, after considering the allegations, the Assize Court had refused this request and the Court of Cassation had upheld that decision. In any event, even supposing that the two psychiatric experts’ statements had been capable of persuading the jurors that Mr Bernard was guilty, his conviction was based on an extensive body of factual evidence, including the fact that he had been identified by several witnesses. 34. The Commission considered that the question whether the psychiatric reports had infringed the applicant’s right to a fair trial had to be determined by examining them in the light of the trial as a whole. It acknowledged, however, that this was no easy task given the specific features of assize court procedure, in which evidence was taken orally at the hearing, no reasons were given in the judgment declaring the defendant guilty and no official transcript of the trial was provided for by the Code of Criminal Procedure. In the present case the members of the jury had heard the experts for the first time at the hearing in the Assize Court. The fact that experts were officially appointed and were required to swear a special oath, different from the one sworn by ordinary witnesses, together with their prestige as specialists, might give particular importance to the opinions they expressed in the minds of lay judges, which was what jurors were. The Commission accordingly took the view that the President of the Assize Court should have reminded the experts what their task was, namely to assist the court on their honour and according to their conscience, thus enabling the applicant, by means of an interlocutory application, to remedy if necessary a situation contrary to the requirements of the Convention. The only possibility which remained open to the defence, namely of asking the court to enter a formal note of the comments concerned in the record and rule them inadmissible, was not sufficient to protect the applicant’s right to a fair hearing within the meaning of Article 6 § 1, given the importance of what was at stake, the severity of the penalty to which he was liable and, above all, the special nature of assize court procedure. 35. As to the alleged infringement of the presumption of innocence, the Commission did not consider it necessary to examine that complaint, in view of the fact that it had found a violation of paragraph 1 of Article 6.