the Privy Council for special leave to appeal, and that legal aid would be available to him for that purpose pursuant to section 3, paragraph 1, of the Poor Prisoners' Defence Act. 4.2 The State party further adds that doubts as to the availability of the written judgement of the Court of Appeal in the case may be attributable to some confusion over the author's identity. In this context/ the Registrar of the Court of Appeal had conveyed the following information: "There is an appeal from a [M.F.] convicted of murder on 30 January 1986. Appeal was heard on 21 May 1987, (...) On 19 June 1987 written judgement was given. The Registrar opined that the confusion lay in the name forwarded to the office, i.e. [M.F.]," 4.3 The State party submits that the availability of the reasoned judgement was not at issue at any stage in the proceedings. Further to an interlocutory decision in the case adopted by the Committee's Working Group in October 1989, in which the State party had been requested to make the written judgement of the Court of Appeal available to the author or his counsel/ M.F. was provided with a copy. 4.4 The State party submits that in cases similar to the author's where a written judgement was in fact delivered by the Court of Appeal, the obligation to make judgement available to the author of a complaint is discharged upon delivery of the written judgement. Accordingly, the judgement was available to the author and his counsel on 19 June 1987, the date of its delivery. Issues and, prpceedinqs before the Committee 5.1 Before considering any claims contained in a communication, the Human Rights Committee must, in accordance with rule 87 of its rules of procedure, decide whether or not it is admissible under the Optional Protocol to the Covenant. 5.2 During its thirty-eighth session, the Committee considered the admissibility of the communication. With respect to the requirement of exhaustion of domestic remedies, it noted the State party's contention that the communication was inadmissible because of the author's failure to petition the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for special leave to appeal. In this context, the Committee observed that, although the Judicial Committee might in principle hear petitions in the absence of a written judgement from the Court of Appeal, its past practice revealed that all petitions unsupported by the relevant court documents had heen dismissed. It therefore considered that if a petition for leave to appeal was to be considered an available and effective remedy, it had to be supported by the judgement from which leave to appeal was sought. The Committee further considered that counsel had made reasonable efforts to obtain the documents in question, and that he was entitled to assume that a petition for special leave to appeal would not be an effective remedy within the meaning of article 5, paragraph 2 (b), of the Optional Protocol. 5.3 On 15 March 1990, therefore, the Committee declared the communication admissible in as much as it appeared to raise issues under article 14 of the Covenant. -332-