The question of if a dead witness can testify in court was the central subject of Friday’s hearing of the trial of 11 suspects into the circumstances surrounding the death of Stylianos Constantinou, the 15-year-old boy who ended his life by suicide in 2019.
Constantinou had, according to his former nursery school teacher Konstantina Papachristodoulou, told her that he was being abused at his home, with references to what Constantinou had allegedly said appearing in a written statement she had sent to the court.
That statement was delivered to the court by prosecution lawyer Eleni Constantinou on Friday. She asked that the court reject an objection to the statement, which was filed at a previous hearing, arguing that existing statute law related to both the admission of evidence in court and domestic violence allows for such evidence to be admitted.
The law on domestic violence in particular, she said, allows for the submission and the admission of what would ordinarily be considered “hearsay” by courts.
Additionally, she argued that Constantinou’s statements to his nursery school teacher would be admissible based on the principle of “res gestae”, which provides for exemptions to what would ordinarily be rejected as “hearsay” on the assumption that the person speaking in the immediate aftermath of a shocking event would not have the time or wherewithal to fabricate a lie.
On the other hand, the lawyer for Constantinou’s father, who faces charges related to alleged physical and psychological violence, as well as common assault and “cruel and inhumane treatment”, argued that previous Supreme Court rulings have found that “testimony from a deceased person cannot be admissible”.
The court will decide on the matter next Friday, June 26.
Constantinou was found dead at his family farm on September 5, 2019.
His death had made headlines at the time, with the government of the day empowering ombudswoman Maria Stylianou Lottides to launch an investigation into the matter in September that year.
In her report, she found that both the police and the social welfare services department had failed to recognise the psychological violence directed at Constantinou by his father, as well as a pattern of violent behaviour towards his mother.
She said the social workers assigned to the case had showed “utter criminal negligence” and that as such, they may bear criminal responsibility for his death, while also saying that police officers had violated their own regulations and failed to inform the relevant government department about incidences of domestic violence.
Social workers’ trade unions had at the time rejected Lottides’ findings, saying that the workers were being unfairly blamed for Constantinou’s death and that they were overworked.
After Constantinou’s death, his two younger siblings were removed from the family home.
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