Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

Petrova raised the load to about one meter above the panel carrier, after which she turned on the slewing motion and the travel motor. In that process, the crane started tilting in the direction of the hoisted load, the trolleys went off the rails, and the crane fell to the ground because of an 80 % overload in excess of crane specifications. This caused multiple skeletal fractures in victim Petrova with damage to internal organs. She died at the scene, which has a direct causal link to foreman Lapenko and slinger Khrapov violating the construction rules.

The people’s court qualified the above acts and omissions by defendants Lapenko and Khrapov as violations of construction rules during construction work resulting in death of a person.

The people’s court found Lapenko and Khrapov guilty of the crime and sentenced both to criminal penalties. However, both were exempted from punishment due to an act of amnesty.

On the same day, the people’s court heard a case against Prutov under standard procedure and handed down a verdict.[201] But it was not the last one.

The last case reviewed on that day was a criminal case against Sorokin. The court heard it under standard procedure and handed down a verdict.[202]

On the next day, the people’s court heard a criminal case against Korkin under standard procedure. Korkin was found guilty of robbery but acquitted of stealing documents.[203]

The list of criminal cases reviewed by the judge under standard procedure – espionage, banditry, bribery and almost all other articles of the Criminal Code – ended with his honorable discharge after 20 years. The judge had no control over his workload. He could neither refuse to consider cases nor delay the proceedings. The excessive burden of labor exhausted him, as he heard cases by day and drafted verdicts by night. With rare exceptions, his decisions were subject to thorough and comprehensive checks by the superior court; in the end, justice prevailed. Any error, even a purported one, could have serious consequences.

For example, on March 25, 2004, the judge was demonstratively punished for delivering a judgment of acquittal[204] in the trial of three field grade officers. He was deprived of most of his monetary bonus and publicly chastised at the regional court’s expanded Presidium session. The judge was publicly accused of delivering an unjust verdict. He was not even allowed to speak; moreover, the Presidium neither read the judgment[205] nor examined the case file.

On September 29 of the same year, however, that exemplary lawful verdict of acquittal entered into force after the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation found it reasonable and just.[206]

Moreover, the Judicial Board on Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation handed down a special ruling against the provincial prosecutor, who, acting as state prosecuting attorney in the case, publicly showed contempt for the judge who delivered an unparalleled verdict of acquittal.

Nevertheless, there was no restoring of the judge’s honor and reputation in the regional court or the prosecutor’s office. As K., deputy president of the court and honored lawyer of the Russian Federation, attempted to right the wrong, the judge received a fifth of his illegally retained payment bonus half a year after the event.

In his public lecture at the Academy of Justice in Moscow in 2002, law professor B., a prominent philosopher from the West, called that phenomenon bondage.

The phenomenon of bondage was philosophically explained by Earl Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, for whom privilege meant first of all responsibility and duty to those without such advantage. “The apostle of humanity and free thought”[207] believed that “the man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become definite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfamiliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected,”[208] which creates a prison for the mind. The difference of such an outlook from free intellect is the desire to be “here” and “now.” There is no peace in such a life but constant struggle between the insistence of desires and the impotence of will.

Spiritually healthy people only irritate such individuals, arousing their spite and fueling their sick lust for power, which manifests as delusions of grandeur alternating with delusions of persecution.

A life in bondage to one’s imaginary superiority and desire to command had skewed the legal consciousness of certain officials, who showed disrespect to the judge because of his administering justice.

One who judges should be ready to be judged; this means that one should always judge oneself in the same manner as if one was judging a villain. The degree of judicial competence is determined by the degree of self-cleansing in the process; a villain shall be no judge to another villain; and one wallowing in the infirmity of desire is not meant to stone an equally infirm and desirous sinner; first, you should get the beam out of your own eye and only then see if and where exactly you need a sword.[209]

Indeed, by defending oneself from injustice, one stands up not only for one’s person but for the truth itself, defending which is a holy duty.[210]

Chapter IV: transformation of criminal justice

4.1. Speransky’s Plan

As elsewhere, the local indigenous population was completely subjugated by the Chinese. They could not read or write, so had no idea which of them owed how much to whom. It was slavery here in the literal sense of the word. For example, an Udege named Si Ba Yun did not collect a specified number of sable furs within a