Post by Anja Nieser on Oct 1, 2006 6:57:35 GMT -5
In Russia, Juries Must Try, Try Again----Panels saw 46% of their
acquittals reversed last year. The fledgling system has some bugs.
When a bomb killed 8 people at a busy marketplace on a steamy summer
afternoon here 5 years ago, police quickly solved the case, as they often
do with spectacular efficiency in Russia.
A composite drawing of a mysterious woman seen at the market that day was
distributed, and a local drunk who vaguely resembled her was soon
arrested. One of her former lovers was hauled in next, and then a few
ne'er-do-wells he knew.
Soon the police had 4 confessions - all pointing the finger at a wealthy
businessman who prosecutors say ordered the bombing to scare off elderly
competitors.
The jury didn't buy it, finding the businessman's claim that he had been
set up by police for refusing to pay bribes much more plausible. All of
the defendants were acquitted in late 2003. In a country with no double
jeopardy clause, a 2nd trial began 11 months later, but that ended in a
mistrial. So did a 3rd. A 4th jury again acquitted the suspects. In April,
the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.
But it's not over yet.
Prosecutors have announced they are petitioning for a new trial with the
presidium of the Supreme Court, the highest judicial panel in Russia. The
businessman, Magomed Isakov, has come to believe that he will simply be
tried until he is found guilty.
"When they acquitted me the last time, I thought my heart would stop,"
Isakov said in an interview at his home, to which he returned this summer
after more than 4 years of on-and-off imprisonment. "The whole courtroom
was crying, even the jurors.
"But I'm sure they will keep appealing. The police, the prosecutors got so
many awards for this. Lots of people were decorated for solving this case.
They don't want to stop."
More than a decade after the Soviet-era judicial system was overhauled,
jury trials in Russia are still a work in progress.
Panels are selected in an opaque process that sometimes produces juries
with visible links to the security services. Jury instructions and verdict
forms can be worded to leave no realistic alternative but conviction. On
the other hand, bribery and threats are still so much a part of the
Russian justice system that no one can guarantee that jurors are not being
influenced to acquit the guilty, legal experts say.
It has been a slow transition from the Soviet-era judicial system, in
which there were no jury trials and courts largely carried out the will of
the government. Of 1.1 million criminal cases tried in Russia last year,
only 600 were decided by juries; the institution will not be fully in
place nationwide until 2007. Jurors acquitted defendants in 18% of the
cases they decided. Defendants tried by judges were found not guilty in 3%
of the cases.
Under laws allowing jury acquittals to be set aside in cases where serious
legal violations occur during trial, the Supreme Court last year reversed
46% of the acquittals and ordered new trials.
Russian jurors are growing increasingly vocal, especially those who may
have spent months hearing evidence in a case only to see their acquittal
reversed by what many see as a flimsy pretext by the prosecution.
Earlier this year, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper published an open letter to
President Vladimir V. Putin from members of 2 juries that had considered
the case of two Moscow businessmen charged with fraud and smuggling.
Jurors decided the case had been triggered by business rivals.
The 1st trial ended in a mistrial after some jurors said they had been
offered bribes to convict the defendants, the letter said. The 2nd jury
acquitted the men, but the verdict was appealed. In January, the
defendants entered their 5th year in custody by going on trial a third
time.
After the acquittal in the second trial, the jurors complained, "the
prosecutor opined that 'Russia wasn't ready for jurors.' Well, she is
entitled to her opinion. But there's a constitution, and there are jurors
like us who don't think so at all.
"Dear Mr. President, can you please explain why this prosecutor wasn't
fired after declaring that 'the jurors freed smugglers'? Or is it really
the prosecutor who makes the decision on whether the defendant is guilty?
If so, why did we spend 8 long months studying all the smallest details of
this case, and why did we vote for the verdict?"
Defense lawyers and legal experts said jury acquittals most often result
not from renegade juries, but from poorly prepared police investigators
and prosecutors unaccustomed to having to make a real case. Another
factor, they said, is a public so familiar with police abuses that it
tends to believe defendants when they say they were forced to confess.
"Before jury trials, our courts have always been on the same side as the
prosecutor's office," said Sergei Nasonov, who has studied jury trials as
a member of the Independent Council of Legal Expertise. "The idea of
admissible evidence entered the court system only with the introduction of
jury trials. And prosecutors found themselves in a completely new
situation: having to convince the jurors that the defendant is guilty."
Here in Astrakhan, a historic city on the Volga River near the Caspian
Sea, the caviar mafia vies with the import-export mafia for power and
money. Chechens and Dagestanis have flooded in from the neighboring
republics, bringing many of their old intramural animosities with them. A
bomb in a marketplace here would immediately have too many potential
perpetrators to count.
Perhaps that's why it took a big coincidence for police to crack the case
of the bomb that went off on Aug. 19, 2001, not far from a small kiosk
Isakov operates as part of the lucrative empire he controls in the
Astrakhan bazaar. Isakov, a migrant from the rough, mountainous republic
of Dagestan, had bought into the market as a shopkeeper years before and
risen to prominence, controlling several sectors and employing hundreds of
workers.
Prosecutors said Isakov had ordered cohorts to plant the bomb to scare off
elderly freelance traders who were selling their wares on the sidewalk
outside his kiosk and force them to pay rent inside the part of the market
he controlled.
Isakov countered that he was being set up because he had made an obscene
gesture at a powerful police official who, in league with a gang of
criminals operating in the market, had approached him shortly before the
bombing for "protection" payments.
"They said I paid $2,000 in order to blow up a bomb to remove those old
babushkas from the sidewalk. Tell me, why couldn't I have had my security
approach those babushkas and simply tell them to get out?
"But no, I had to blow them up, and at the same time damage my own kiosk?
How can I even think about it? It's absurd," Isakov said over tea in his
sprawling, 3-story house.
His codefendants say they were coerced into confessing through beatings
and, in one case, electric shock. "They would work on me. Then they would
approach the operations officer who's in charge of my cell, and say, 'OK,
we didn't manage to get the right answers,' " said Alexander Shturba,
accused of being the bomb builder.
Viktor Gordeyev, who served on the first jury, said jurors didn't find the
prosecution's case believable.
"As the case went on, we began to feel that these defendants could not
possibly have done what they were accused of," Gordeyev said.
Rumiya Mukhamedzhanova, head of the state prosecutions department in
Astrakhan, said there was "substantial" evidence against the defendants.
The number of acquittals in jury trials, she said, can be ascribed in part
to inexperienced investigators and prosecutors, but also to more nefarious
factors.
"There is the possibility of influence on the part of the defendants
toward the jurors," she said. "When jurors are leaving the courthouse,
they're without any supervision. And it's not a big problem to track them
down, find out what transport they were using, where did they go, find out
where they live. This is being used by some lawyers, and as a result, it
can affect jurors' verdicts."
In the fourth and most recent trial of Isakov and his codefendants, she
said, 2 jurors reported that relatives of the defendants had approached
them at their homes and "urged them to take a decision in favor of the
defendant, while using some threats."
Those jurors resigned and were replaced with alternates. But prosecutors
argued in their latest appeal that the other jurors might have been
intimidated. The appeal also argues that defendants illegally made
statements in front of the jury that they were beaten into confessing.
Under recent Russian court rulings - hotly contested by outraged defense
lawyers - such statements are inadmissible, prosecutors pointed out.
"They can appeal to the Lord Almighty if they want to, but I'm 1 million
percent sure that these people are not guilty of this crime," said
Isakov's lawyer, Nodar Duishvili, whose law partner was shot to death in
Astrakhan while working on the case. The slaying has not been solved.
"But this is how the system in Russia works. The judicial system has
merged with the law enforcement agencies, the police, the prosecutors, the
FSB [Federal Security Service], they work together as a single system, and
it doesn't matter whether a person is innocent or not."
Svetlana Zaonskaya, foreman of the jury in the third trial, said she
thinks she knows why her panel was disbanded before it reached a verdict.
"When the court realized that we thought all of them are innocent," she
said, "they simply dismissed our jury."
(source: Los Angeles Times)
acquittals reversed last year. The fledgling system has some bugs.
When a bomb killed 8 people at a busy marketplace on a steamy summer
afternoon here 5 years ago, police quickly solved the case, as they often
do with spectacular efficiency in Russia.
A composite drawing of a mysterious woman seen at the market that day was
distributed, and a local drunk who vaguely resembled her was soon
arrested. One of her former lovers was hauled in next, and then a few
ne'er-do-wells he knew.
Soon the police had 4 confessions - all pointing the finger at a wealthy
businessman who prosecutors say ordered the bombing to scare off elderly
competitors.
The jury didn't buy it, finding the businessman's claim that he had been
set up by police for refusing to pay bribes much more plausible. All of
the defendants were acquitted in late 2003. In a country with no double
jeopardy clause, a 2nd trial began 11 months later, but that ended in a
mistrial. So did a 3rd. A 4th jury again acquitted the suspects. In April,
the Supreme Court upheld the verdict.
But it's not over yet.
Prosecutors have announced they are petitioning for a new trial with the
presidium of the Supreme Court, the highest judicial panel in Russia. The
businessman, Magomed Isakov, has come to believe that he will simply be
tried until he is found guilty.
"When they acquitted me the last time, I thought my heart would stop,"
Isakov said in an interview at his home, to which he returned this summer
after more than 4 years of on-and-off imprisonment. "The whole courtroom
was crying, even the jurors.
"But I'm sure they will keep appealing. The police, the prosecutors got so
many awards for this. Lots of people were decorated for solving this case.
They don't want to stop."
More than a decade after the Soviet-era judicial system was overhauled,
jury trials in Russia are still a work in progress.
Panels are selected in an opaque process that sometimes produces juries
with visible links to the security services. Jury instructions and verdict
forms can be worded to leave no realistic alternative but conviction. On
the other hand, bribery and threats are still so much a part of the
Russian justice system that no one can guarantee that jurors are not being
influenced to acquit the guilty, legal experts say.
It has been a slow transition from the Soviet-era judicial system, in
which there were no jury trials and courts largely carried out the will of
the government. Of 1.1 million criminal cases tried in Russia last year,
only 600 were decided by juries; the institution will not be fully in
place nationwide until 2007. Jurors acquitted defendants in 18% of the
cases they decided. Defendants tried by judges were found not guilty in 3%
of the cases.
Under laws allowing jury acquittals to be set aside in cases where serious
legal violations occur during trial, the Supreme Court last year reversed
46% of the acquittals and ordered new trials.
Russian jurors are growing increasingly vocal, especially those who may
have spent months hearing evidence in a case only to see their acquittal
reversed by what many see as a flimsy pretext by the prosecution.
Earlier this year, the Novaya Gazeta newspaper published an open letter to
President Vladimir V. Putin from members of 2 juries that had considered
the case of two Moscow businessmen charged with fraud and smuggling.
Jurors decided the case had been triggered by business rivals.
The 1st trial ended in a mistrial after some jurors said they had been
offered bribes to convict the defendants, the letter said. The 2nd jury
acquitted the men, but the verdict was appealed. In January, the
defendants entered their 5th year in custody by going on trial a third
time.
After the acquittal in the second trial, the jurors complained, "the
prosecutor opined that 'Russia wasn't ready for jurors.' Well, she is
entitled to her opinion. But there's a constitution, and there are jurors
like us who don't think so at all.
"Dear Mr. President, can you please explain why this prosecutor wasn't
fired after declaring that 'the jurors freed smugglers'? Or is it really
the prosecutor who makes the decision on whether the defendant is guilty?
If so, why did we spend 8 long months studying all the smallest details of
this case, and why did we vote for the verdict?"
Defense lawyers and legal experts said jury acquittals most often result
not from renegade juries, but from poorly prepared police investigators
and prosecutors unaccustomed to having to make a real case. Another
factor, they said, is a public so familiar with police abuses that it
tends to believe defendants when they say they were forced to confess.
"Before jury trials, our courts have always been on the same side as the
prosecutor's office," said Sergei Nasonov, who has studied jury trials as
a member of the Independent Council of Legal Expertise. "The idea of
admissible evidence entered the court system only with the introduction of
jury trials. And prosecutors found themselves in a completely new
situation: having to convince the jurors that the defendant is guilty."
Here in Astrakhan, a historic city on the Volga River near the Caspian
Sea, the caviar mafia vies with the import-export mafia for power and
money. Chechens and Dagestanis have flooded in from the neighboring
republics, bringing many of their old intramural animosities with them. A
bomb in a marketplace here would immediately have too many potential
perpetrators to count.
Perhaps that's why it took a big coincidence for police to crack the case
of the bomb that went off on Aug. 19, 2001, not far from a small kiosk
Isakov operates as part of the lucrative empire he controls in the
Astrakhan bazaar. Isakov, a migrant from the rough, mountainous republic
of Dagestan, had bought into the market as a shopkeeper years before and
risen to prominence, controlling several sectors and employing hundreds of
workers.
Prosecutors said Isakov had ordered cohorts to plant the bomb to scare off
elderly freelance traders who were selling their wares on the sidewalk
outside his kiosk and force them to pay rent inside the part of the market
he controlled.
Isakov countered that he was being set up because he had made an obscene
gesture at a powerful police official who, in league with a gang of
criminals operating in the market, had approached him shortly before the
bombing for "protection" payments.
"They said I paid $2,000 in order to blow up a bomb to remove those old
babushkas from the sidewalk. Tell me, why couldn't I have had my security
approach those babushkas and simply tell them to get out?
"But no, I had to blow them up, and at the same time damage my own kiosk?
How can I even think about it? It's absurd," Isakov said over tea in his
sprawling, 3-story house.
His codefendants say they were coerced into confessing through beatings
and, in one case, electric shock. "They would work on me. Then they would
approach the operations officer who's in charge of my cell, and say, 'OK,
we didn't manage to get the right answers,' " said Alexander Shturba,
accused of being the bomb builder.
Viktor Gordeyev, who served on the first jury, said jurors didn't find the
prosecution's case believable.
"As the case went on, we began to feel that these defendants could not
possibly have done what they were accused of," Gordeyev said.
Rumiya Mukhamedzhanova, head of the state prosecutions department in
Astrakhan, said there was "substantial" evidence against the defendants.
The number of acquittals in jury trials, she said, can be ascribed in part
to inexperienced investigators and prosecutors, but also to more nefarious
factors.
"There is the possibility of influence on the part of the defendants
toward the jurors," she said. "When jurors are leaving the courthouse,
they're without any supervision. And it's not a big problem to track them
down, find out what transport they were using, where did they go, find out
where they live. This is being used by some lawyers, and as a result, it
can affect jurors' verdicts."
In the fourth and most recent trial of Isakov and his codefendants, she
said, 2 jurors reported that relatives of the defendants had approached
them at their homes and "urged them to take a decision in favor of the
defendant, while using some threats."
Those jurors resigned and were replaced with alternates. But prosecutors
argued in their latest appeal that the other jurors might have been
intimidated. The appeal also argues that defendants illegally made
statements in front of the jury that they were beaten into confessing.
Under recent Russian court rulings - hotly contested by outraged defense
lawyers - such statements are inadmissible, prosecutors pointed out.
"They can appeal to the Lord Almighty if they want to, but I'm 1 million
percent sure that these people are not guilty of this crime," said
Isakov's lawyer, Nodar Duishvili, whose law partner was shot to death in
Astrakhan while working on the case. The slaying has not been solved.
"But this is how the system in Russia works. The judicial system has
merged with the law enforcement agencies, the police, the prosecutors, the
FSB [Federal Security Service], they work together as a single system, and
it doesn't matter whether a person is innocent or not."
Svetlana Zaonskaya, foreman of the jury in the third trial, said she
thinks she knows why her panel was disbanded before it reached a verdict.
"When the court realized that we thought all of them are innocent," she
said, "they simply dismissed our jury."
(source: Los Angeles Times)