Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

the true murderer might also be the political offender Arkadiy Shaposhnikov, who was in a relationship with Anfisa and disappeared without a trace one day after the crime, or perhaps burned to death together with her. Finally, a graphic story was laid out, inspired by Innokentiy Filatych, purporting that the victim was shot by some brigand who intended to rob her but got interrupted at the moment of murder; he came back to rob at another time, plied the watchman with drink, broke into the apartment, found wine in the buffet, got drunk, started a fire in a state of intoxication, and burned to death. According to that story, the investigation could not recover bullets from the skull of the burnt Anfisa Kozyreva, so the investigation had to resort to speculations, not statements.

Still, despite the prosecutor’s brilliant speech, the jury delivered a judgment of not guilty for Prokhor Gromov and one of guilty for Ibrahim Ogly.[254]

Judicial proceedings with the involvement of jury are carried out according to standard procedure, with due account taken of the provisions of Article 42 of the CPC RF. For this reason, criminal trial by jury complies with the general rule that contested evidence shall be found inadmissible if the law directly provides reasons to do so. The decision is single-handedly made by the presiding professional judge.

Before hearing the criminal case against N. with the involvement of jury, I was considering an application to extend the detention period for N.’s mother involved in the same case. Doubting that N.’s confession of murdering two persons, from which arose all the other evidence in the case, was obtained in a permissible way, I rejected the prosecution’s request to extend the detention term for N.’s mother and released her in the courtroom.

My experienced and good faith colleague, who presided in the case against N., rejected the defense’s request to exclude N.’s contested confession from evidence. He found the contents of the investigation report admissible evidence.

As a result, the jury handed down a verdict of guilty.

Wasn’t N. sacrificed to the juridical formula, just like Michele de Montaigne had warned us 440 years ago?

Fifteen hundred kilometers away from home, in a permafrozen northern town at the end of a single-track line that had opened in 1974, the judge finished hearing four criminal cases and returned to his working spot – table and wooden stool – in a several square feet large office accommodating three judges. In time, the housekeeping replaced his stool with an armchair.

The judge was handed a many-volumed criminal case file marked “for trial” by his superiors. He discovered on that duty assignment that the copies of the indictment delivered to the defendants in custody did not contain the banditry charge against all of the arrestees, described in the formal notice of the charges. The original indictment in the case file, however, contained the banditry charge. Thus, the defendants were accused of banditry but kind of had no right to know the circumstances of that particularly grave offense the investigation charged them with. Obviously, their right to defense was violated.

The judge produced proper copies of the indictment and delivered them to the arrestees, also giving them time to study the document as provided by the criminal procedure law. In the meantime, he considered a different criminal case.

In sum, the indictment copies that the investigation handed to the people charged with particularly grave crimes, some of them punishable by capital penalty, did not match the official indictment in the case file. The judge discovered the mismatch with the help of the defense, carefully inquiring each of the defendants whether they understand the charge, whether they confess their guilt, and whether they or their counsel wants to express their view of the charges filed. The eight defendants were indicted for about twenty offenses in total, and the judge interviewed every one of them on every offense they were charged with.

After the court addressed the violation of the right to defense, the trial on the merits of the charge started.

Right after that trial, the judge had to consider another case, no less complicated. Following is what the court established with regard to that case,[255] as evident from the verdict.[256] The preliminary investigation authorities, with due account for the position of the state prosecuting attorney who upheld the charges but changed the legal qualification of the acts, – charged defendant Porokhov pursuant to Article 209 Part 1 of the CC RF with creating a gang and operating it from January until December, and defendants Perov, Pervushin, Sergeyev, Moiseyev, and Bragin pursuant to Article 209 Part 2 of the CC RF with participation in the gang.

All defendants except Bednyakov and Knyazev were charged with participation in the armed group that Porokhov had created in January, aiming to unite the criminal elements under his command. The gang was apparently created to devise plans and provide conditions for subsequent attacks on citizens and organizations, as well as other grave and particularly grave offenses like murder, racketeering, and theft. With this in mind, Porokhov invited Pervushin and Leskov in the gang, involved Perov, and recruited Moiseyev and Bragin through Pervushin and Leskov. In April, Porokhov added Sergeyev to the gang as his personal guard. He also involved four unknown persons, whose responsibility was to commit crimes directly, from which Porokhov himself later withdrew, as asserted by the investigation.

In January, Porokhov put at the gang’s disposal two 7.62 mm TT pistols, which he and Leskov bought under unknown circumstances in an unknown place from unknown persons. On the night after the purchase, Porokhov passed the pistols through Leskov to Drozdov for safekeeping.

Leskov bought more firearms in January – it is not known where, how, or from whom – and kept them in an unknown stash. Specifically, he purchased a 9 mm pistol and 15 rounds for it, two PM pistols with an unknown quantity of ammunition, a TNT