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Nobody knows where and how jurors are selected. Where are these computers, and who looks after the programmes doing the selection? Technically, this is laid down as a matter of administration, not of due legal procedure. In other words, it's carried out by the secretary to the judge or an assistant. How and where is not said. This is the main opportunity for the men in robes and uniform to rig the result.
8. There is another important way of tampering with the judicial process - the court transcript. It's vital for this to be compiled, day in and day out, by an entirely independent person and not by the secretary to the judge. In the West, this is done by an outside contractor with no connection to the court at all, who maintains a stenographic record and publishes it immediately - the stenographic equipment is linked to a computer. This practice is not unattainable for our courts. If it were implemented, the transcript could be available by the end of the day's proceedings.
But Russian law makes no provision for such subtleties. The record is compiled at the end of the trial from computer files stored, we know not how, by the secretary to the judge. This enabled Natalya Olikhver to strike crucial elements from the transcript. But there is no way of proving this. The defence challenged the transcript of the trial but was ignored.
The Americans sometimes set up five chambers, to represent each party. One "answers for" the judge, one for the prosecution, one for the defence, and so on. We lack the funding to do that, but a daily transcript must be kept nonetheless. So that a judge cannot brazenly strike from the record things that were said many times over in the presence of others - even at a closed trial.
If a juror reports interference, the judge should arrange for protection, and this should bring the same benefit as if the juror had gone to the media (one way or another, we again acknowledge the media's role as monitor). But in Russia, a judge will usually dismiss a juror who complains of interference. Under the pretext that his or her impartiality has been compromised. Jurors generally keep quiet.
Yet a judge is under no obligation to release a juror in that event. There is nothing about this in the law. A judge can continue to hear a case with the current jurors, if he has confidence in them. The removal of jurors in the event of interference can, like the other pretexts, lead to the entire jury being dismissed. This is another way in which the machinery of repression can handle the jury system. It's all above board - not enough reserve jurors. So in reality, dismissal of the jury is in the hands of the judge. If there's a will, there's a way.
10. Yet another method is suppression of information. For example, in an espionage trial the defence wants to tell the jury that the alleged secrets are not secret at all, they have been published in the press. The judge refuses, saying that this is a legal matter. That is, the judge decides what is a state secret and what is not. The jurors' task is to decide whether the defendant disclosed them. If they answer that yes, he did, then no matter that the "secrets" are already in the public domain. The judge rules that they are secret, so - conviction.
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