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Saturday, September 30, 2006

Law - "In Russia, Juries Must Try, Try Again"

The LA Times today has a long, informative story by Kim Murphy about jury trials in Russia. Some quotes:

In a country with no double jeopardy clause, a second trial began 11 months later, but that ended in a mistrial. So did a third. A fourth 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 four 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.

[More] Also today, Peter Finn of the Washington Post Foreign Service writes that "In Russia, Psychiatry Is Again a Tool Against Dissent." A quote:
that Soviet-style forced psychiatry has reemerged in Russia as a weapon to intimidate or discredit citizens who tangle with the authorities, according to human rights activists and some mental health professionals. Despite major reforms in the early 1990s, some officials are again employing this form of repression.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on September 30, 2006 09:16 AM
Posted to General Law Related