Challenge to jury

A thaw, you say... The dawn of a new era... A professor's family... A professional lawyer... And why, my dears, are you so hooked and stabbed that you can't touch a tooth? However, I know why. It's a hangover. Since the evening you have had too much of empty dreams and rainbow-colored illusions. Well, it’s okay, now I’ll improve your health...

Last Wednesday, at a regular meeting of the Security Council, which this time met in the south of the country, Dmitry Medvedev made a number of proposals designed to improve the Russian judicial system. Or rather, what’s left of it. The innovations will mainly affect jury trials. Although, not only him. Medvedev has a number of complaints about the jury trial. First of all, there is too much of it, which incredibly complicates the procedure for passing guilty verdicts. The investigative authorities are not coping. Over the past five years that jury trials have been actively operating in Russia, their extreme ineffectiveness has become apparent. The obvious thing is that previously the defendant during the trial opposed a single punitive system. In fact, the state prosecutor asked the judge: “You see, Natalya Ivanovna, who is sitting in front of you? Do you need any more proof?" “Yes, completely, Ivan Ivanovich,” answered the judge, “I see perfectly well... Is five years in total normal?”

And then completely strangers came to court, sometimes not even from law enforcement agencies, far from law enforcement issues, and often not always recognizing the true interests of the state. Such people need to prove the guilt of the defendant, that is, collect convincing and well-reasoned evidence. Our investigators were probably taught this at the institutes, but in practice they never encountered such puzzles. The savvy reader, of course, will smile - they say, as if it is impossible to put pressure on the jury and achieve the desired decision? Of course you can. And this happens almost everywhere. But there are many courts, but few law enforcement agencies. At least for this amount of work. Jury development is a whole series of separate investigative activities associated with surveillance, wiretapping, identifying vicious relationships, etc. How else can you dig up incriminating evidence on a person in order to pin him down later? Moreover, I note that investigators must do all this titanic work completely free of charge - the juror is not a businessman, he will not pay off. That is, during a crisis, authorities must take time off from pressing matters of protecting commercial structures and lobbying private interests and spend time on God knows what. It is clear that lawyer Medvedev cannot help but worry about this situation.

It is not yet very clear which articles of the Criminal Code the innovations will affect. But judging by the fact that Medvedev proposes to remove from the jurisdiction of the jury crimes committed by criminal communities and organized criminal groups, there will be a fair amount of these articles. Let me also remind you that this is not the first attack recently on a relatively new judicial institution - at the end of last year this shagreen skin was already cut once. Then, under approximately the same pretexts, the jury was deprived of the opportunity to participate in trials where charges were brought under especially serious criminal articles. It is now obvious that this trend - the curtailment of jury trials in Russia - is gaining momentum.

However, the Russian court does not live by a single jury. Or rather, not alive. It turns out that there is another principle in our judicial system that Dmitry Medvedev is completely unhappy with and which he proposed to immediately abandon. I quote: “It would be possible to make a decision in the near future to change the territorial jurisdiction for cases of an extremist and terrorist nature, so that bandits and corrupt officials cannot put pressure on the courts.” Let’s not find fault with the highest officials and ask what the corrupt officials have to do with “cases of an extremist and terrorist nature.” Lawyer Medvedev probably knows better. Let's focus on the main thing. So, from Medvedev’s point of view, bandits and corrupt officials should not put pressure on the court... Here I will allow myself to add for the president - he was simply embarrassed to say - when their interests do not coincide with the interests of the state. It is clear that in Russia there is only one force that can and should influence the court. This is power. Now imagine the torment of the judge, who, on the one hand, received a call from the lawyers, and on the other, received a call from the Administration. Not every judge is so cunning that he would think to share it with the Administration. Sometimes modest and shy people work in this field. Why expose them to such psychological stress? And so he took the accused to Tmutarakan, where not only can you not bring the money, but not every lawyer will get there, and judge on your own health, as the authorities ordered, without unnecessary temptations and doubts.

There, it seems, Medvedev casually mentioned extremists... So that they too could be judged anywhere. Well, we understand that. Let's say, for prominent extremists like Kasparov or Limonov, the press will go to Tyumen and Khanty-Mansiysk. But he certainly won’t go after the privates. That is, it will be possible to quietly, without attracting much attention, somewhere beyond the Arctic Circle, sentence 10 to 15 people to real terms. Or a couple of hundred... Or a couple of thousand... It depends...

And, nevertheless, I support this initiative of Dmitry Medvedev, but with only one improvement. I propose that the principle of extraterritoriality of criminal cases in which Russian citizens are accused should be extended significantly more widely. Outside the Russian Federation. Moreover, it is not necessary to immediately run to the Americans and recruit a jury from Alabama. You don't have to go that far. Let's start with The Hague...