Excessive Length of Pretrial Detention in the Light of Jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights

The article is devoted to the problem of applying pre-trial detention by Polish courts since Poland has become a member state of the Council of Europe. The author aims to present the standards of the European Court of Human Right’s jurisprudence in this respect, and at the same time to highlight the most frequent mistakes in the jurisprudence of national courts, which result in finding of a violation of Article 5(3) of the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. The author’s intention is to show, using a historical method, that the institution of pre-trial detention was abused by Polish courts in previous years, however, it has improved now due to, among other things, the influence of judgments of the European Court of Human Rights on the process of establishing and applying the law in Poland in the field of pre-trial detention over the past 29 years.