Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

provincial court had to have a specific composition of judges. Two locals shot a number of workers – this was what the local newspaper said about the case. The presiding judge scheduled the trial of the case in the district capital – a small town, but only two women from that town were on the provincial court’s list of people’s court assessors. When the two assessors were informed of the case, one of them refused to participate in the trial, citing her religious beliefs – not personal bias, which would be defined as recusal by the law of criminal procedure. As a result, a different people’s assessor arrived to the town along with the judge and the court secretary, while the other local assessor on the list joined them in the provincial court to hear the case.

The shooters were two men, nephew and uncle. The nephew tried taking all the blame upon himself, while his uncle denied direct involvement in the murder. Nevertheless, the court found both of them guilty of the murder of K. and attempted murder of S.

Here is what the court established. In the nighttime, the defendants broke into the house where five people were resting, including the host. The uncle and the nephew opened fire with a hunter carbine and a sniper rifle correspondingly, killing K. with a point blank shot and seriously wounding S., who managed to push aside the barrel of the rifle pointing at his chest. Then the other men, who found themselves in the field of fire, risked their lives and disarmed the murderers. Those heroic men passed the culprits to the police immediately and made arrangements so that their bleeding friend was brought to the hospital, where doctors saved his life.

The hired workers – the innocent victims – had no relation to the murderers. Both defendants were sentenced to long-term imprisonment,[135] and the uncle died in a transit prison.[136] Before becoming a murderer, he had fed the lonely, the sick and the poor in his village, providing help to anyone who needed it. He was a physically large man, and the cage he was sitting in was too small for him. Therefore, the presiding judge allowed him to remain seated when testifying, answering the questions and presenting motions. Still, the giant obviously felt uncomfortable sitting on the narrow bench for defendants, restrained by a wall on one side and bars on the other. Answering the questions of the visiting people’s assessor, he was calling her “babushka”—“grandma,” a friendly and gentle way of address in the locality. The people’s assessor was an older, retired woman and had nothing against such address, but had no further questions for the defendant. For most of her life, this kind woman worked as a prosecutor and had a professional habit of posing just the right questions. She also taught the art of wisdom to future lawyers in a state university.

The judicial board for criminal cases of the provincial court reviewed the case for three days. Many people came to the hearing, and the only courtroom in the building was overcrowded. All three local attorneys were defending the two accused men. During the proceedings, one of the counsels suddenly disappeared, and his colleague volunteered to find him. Before becoming a lawyer, that conscientious man had headed the criminal investigation department in a big city; some time later after the case, he started the career of a judge. It turned out that the disappeared man was hungry and went to dig out some potatoes from his vegetable garden. At that point, he fell asleep. The autumn had just begun, and the noonday sun warmed the people and the earth. In the nighttime, however, when the judge was working on the draft of the verdict, only a shaman’s drum was heard in the silent and cold hotel room…

On one of the three days of the trial, the judge met with the people’s assessor who had resigned from the hearing panel. She had the look of a nun. According to the sacred rules, nuns and monks should have no personal opinion, even less a dissenting one. When deciding on the judgment in the court chambers, however, a judge has no right to abstain. That woman made the right choice, because she followed the rules of her spiritual tradition. In this way, she contributed to justice, not obstructed it.

Many years of experience, along with a holistic approach informed by cultural and legal studies, have allowed me to formulate a personal vision of the dissenting opinion, which is:

– a legal opportunity for the judge to exercise their freedom of consciousness (beliefs) in the panel hearing of a criminal case;

– a real cultural indicator of the judge’s independence and the democratic fundamentals of criminal justice;

– an additional guarantee that the rights of the person involved in the criminal proceedings, including the right to appeal, are respected.

From the religious and philosophical point of view, consciousness is very closely related to the general condition of one’s soul, depending on the soul’s natural and moral development, education, lifestyle, and personal history in general. The development of consciousness depends on how well the mind is educated and how strong one’s will is. Strict honesty, particularly love for truth and correspondence between practical actions and theoretical knowledge, is the primary basis of a keen, lucid, and alert conscience – in other words, conscientiousness. Everyone has a conscience only for themselves. Therefore, every person should be careful not to elevate their conscience to the level of law for other people, because it harms the freedom of conscience.

1.4. Some Cultural Aspects of Criminal Justice

In my personal opinion, Russian criminal justice retains some features of ancient Hebrew law, which pronounced the human right to free self-identification, Byzantine law, which upheld inequality, and Slavic Russian customary law. Thus is revealed the initial cultural and legal basis of Russian criminal justice, which is first