Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

prosecution, a covert video recording was viewed at trial, where investigator Dmitriev talked to the arrested Porokhov. The record shows Porokhov stating that the grenade launcher was used not by Sergeyev but by Leskov, from whom Porokhov personally learned about it.

Porokhov stated in the same video recording that Sergeyev might have advised Leskov on how to shoot a grenade launcher. However, the court could not accept that as evidence to prove Sergeyev’s guilt, because Porokhov did not name his source.

Witness Nizhnev testified that his car had been hijacked in August. He suspected Pyzhov and sought the assistance of his acquaintance Butorin. The hijacked car was found by police officers in the Far East and returned to him.

Witness Pavlenko testified to the preliminary investigation that he worked as Leskov’s driver and drove two cars. He doesn’t know anything on the case.

At trial, Pavlenko added that Knyazev wasn’t Leskov’s driver and Bednyakov wasn’t his guard.

Moiseyev was positively assessed by character witness Malyavina.

Witness Kuks testified that he and Utkin, for business reasons, came to the hotel where Leskov, Porokhov, Perov, and Sergeyev were staying. Kuks had a conversation with Porokhov, who was hurrying to a funeral in another town.

Kuks confirmed his testimony at trial after it was read out by the court.

Witness Utkin confirmed Kuks’s testimony regarding his meeting with Porokhov next to the hotel. Among others, he also saw Porokhov’s guard, Sergeyev. The witness, however, didn’t mention the date of encounter. Utkin did not specify the date in court, either.

Eyewitnesses Konev, Koneva, Vlasov, Gurevich, Shchukin, Sergeyev, Voronov, Zyablikov, Glukhov, and Burkovskaya confirmed Sergeyev’s alibi both during the preliminary investigation and in court. All of them said that Sergeyev was temporarily living in the taiga village after he came out of the taiga, having hunted there in the first decade of November, where each of the eyewitnesses personally saw Sergeyev under various circumstances.

Besides, Sergeyev’s alibi was confirmed at trial by witnesses Puzikova and Matveyev, who lived in a more distant village. They stated that during the time period in question, Sergeyev was among the other hunters in the taiga of that northern district of East Siberia.

Witnesses Leskova, Telegina, and Sopina confirmed Moiseyev’s alibi both during the preliminary investigation and in court. During the time period in question, Moiseyev was continuously staying with Leskova in another town, where all three women saw Moiseyev. He was helping all the time, always “in sight” and involved.

Besides, Moiseyev’s alibi was confirmed by witness Zulyar, who identified Moiseyev as someone she had seen in Leskova’s house in the night time period in question.

Thus, the case file does not contain any factual information that would cast doubt on the veracity of Sergeyev and Moiseyev’s alibis or prove the witnesses’ interest in the outcome of the case. The prosecution did not present any such materials at trial, either. Hence, the court had no reason to distrust the witnesses, and therefore, doubt the alibi of those defendants.

The same facts of the case prevent the court from doubting Bragin’s alibi on the day of Petrov’s murder.

Witness Bazyuk testified that he arrived to the scene of the incident as member of the emergency crew on duty. There were already many fire trucks and private security cars, and the house was on fire. He interviewed the witnesses, but didn’t find out or write down anything. Then he noticed how one of the firefighters found an object on the other side of the road in front of the neighboring house, past the utility pole. He walked up to that spot and saw it was a grenade launcher. He took it and put it in his car. When the police task force came, he talked to the investigator and passed her the grenade launcher. She put it in her car. He hadn’t shown the grenade launcher to anyone else, and no one took photos or videos of it.

As evident from the scene inpection report, Bazyuk showed the place where one of the firefighters found an object looking like a grenade laucher – on the ground next to lamp post 94 on the other side of the road, armed, without the grenade, exhaust pipe pointed towards the house and front end towards the fence.

However, an overall crime scene photograph (No. 2) attached to the report clearly shows that the object, found by an unknown firefighter, is lying in front of a different house on the same street, on the curb, in a different position than stated in the report.

The inspection report shows that the object found was an RPG-18 anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade launching device with a marking and a number.

According to the record of seizure, the RPG-18 grenade launcher was seized from Bazyuk in the prosecutor’s office at 8:40 a. m. by Vlasov, investigator of the prosecutor’s office. This contradicts the above testimony of Bazyuk, who passed a similar object to an unknown woman – a police investigator on the scene, who put the object in her car. As a result, the fate of the object is unknown.

However, the material evidence in the case – the empty RPG-18—was never provided to Bazyuk for identification, i. e. Bazyuk didn’t identify it. That shortcoming cannot be made up for since Bazuk died.

Assessing Bazyuk’s pre-trial testimony to the investigation, the judicial board took into consideration the information provided by the press service of the regional operations directorate, published in the mass media. That state service published a photograph from the scene – an unknown person demonstrating as a grenade launcher an object similar to the one presented by the preliminary investigation as evidence in the trial.

Given Bazyuk’s conflicting testimony and the above tampering with the supposed material evidence, it is impossible to make an irrefutable conclusion regarding the origin of the material evidence provided to the court by the preliminary investigation – the empty RPG-18 single-shot rocket-propelled anti-tank grenade launching device.

Furthermore, a man named Bronevitsky identified this