Суд мести

13. A common practice nowadays is for the judge to put to the jury the exact wording used by the prosecution, without bothering to rephrase the charge to take account of the court's independent position. Not all jurors are accustomed to thinking for themselves, so the case for the prosecution is planted in their minds.

... At a meeting with Mr Lebedev, the chairman of the Supreme Court, early in 2005, President Putin asked him to report on the court's campaign against drugs. Lebedev gave an animated and detailed account, as if he had been expecting the question.

These two lawyers seem to think that the function of the court is to campaign. But I thought it was to establish the truth, including to protect people from unfounded accusations. Nothing more, and nothing less. The judges I met while researching for this book acknowledged that only for a very short period, in 1993-1994, did we have a relatively independent judicial system. After that it quickly started slipping back to Soviet-era standards.

Chapter 9
Proceedings begin. The jury.

The first jury to consider Aleksey Pichugin's case was dismissed by the Moscow City Court in December 2004. My colleagues have been able to speak to seven of its members. Four consented to be identified in our account by their first names and patronymics. Three requested anonymity. The others flatly refused to talk, for a single reason - fear of the consequences. Such is the democracy in which we live.

The former jurors say that they were inclining towards an acquittal. They were bound by a non-disclosure order regarding the trial's phoney secrets, but on the other hand they did not reach the stage of delivering a verdict and so they agreed to speak about their brief legal career.

In autumn 2004, 16 people in Moscow received jury summons. They were to hear a complex case of murder and attempted murder. The defence team was unable to confirm that these people's names were on the Moscow City Court jury lists, as endorsed by the Moscow authorities for 2004. The lists are published by the mayor's office but with a lengthy delay. Sometimes defence lawyers can only check that the jurors' names tally with the official list after a trial is over.

As the jurors were being selected, the judge warned that the trial could take months due to the voluminous amount of evidence. Sixteen people were empanelled - 12 main jurors and four reserves in the event of someone being excused. Proceedings began on 4 October 2004. The jurors recall that initially everyone involved - defence, prosecution and the judge - seemed keen to press on.

"We sat for an entire month," says pensioner Nina Vasilyevna. "We'd been listening to prosecution witnesses, and then things started going wrong. We'd turn up at court and be told there was no hearing that day: either the accused was unwell, or a lawyer, or the judge."

To begin with, these indispositions seemed innocuous enough. But the proceedings kept being adjourned and some of the jurors began to suspect the trial was being deliberately delayed. Defence lawyers were alarmed when Aleksey once again failed to appear, allegedly being unwell. At a meeting with him in prison they established that he was in fact feeling fine. So the trial was being stalled.

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