Fairness in Criminal Appeal [electronic resource] : A Critical and Interdisciplinary Analysis of the ECtHR Case-Law / edited by Helena Morão, Ricardo Tavares da Silva.

Part I: Introduction -- The ECtHR case-law on immediacy in criminal appeal -- Part II: Criminal appeal immediacy models and the ECtHR case-law -- The evidence renewal model in Italy -- The retrial model in Spain -- The audio recordings model in Portugal: The appeal court's perspective -- The audio recordings model in Portugal: The defendant's and the victim's perspectives -- Part III: Immediacy in criminal procedure theory and cognitive sciences -- Immediacy at the first instance trial -- Audio-visual recordings as evidence in criminal procedure -- Neuroscience of memory and philosophy of knowledge challenges to immediacy -- AI assistance in the courtroom and immediacy -- Part IV: Concluding thoughts -- On the legitimacy of the ECtHR's criminal appeal immediacy requirement.

This book addresses the European Court of Human Rights' fairness standards in criminal appeal, filling a gap in this less researched area of studies. Based on a fair trial immediacy requirement, the Court has found several violations of Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights at the appellate level by at least eighteen States of the Council of Europe in a vast array of cases, particularly in contexts of first instance acquittals overturning and of sentences increasing on appeal. On the one hand, the book critically engages this case-law with the law revisions it has recently inspired in European countries, as well as with the critiques and difficulties that it continues to raise. On the other hand, it interweaves insight from criminal procedure theory with new discoveries in the field of cognitive sciences (neuroscience of memory, philosophy of knowledge, AI), shedding an interdisciplinary light on the (in)adequacy and limits of the Strasbourg Court's jurisprudence.