Time to justify

The prosecutor's office decided that it was in vain to convict the rapist's victim

The sensational case of Muscovite Alexandra Ivannikova, who was convicted last week of murdering a man who tried to rape her, received an unexpected development yesterday. The prosecution, at the insistence of which the woman was sentenced, suddenly demanded that she be acquitted. The Moscow prosecutor's office yesterday addressed such a petition to a higher authority - the Moscow City Court. In order to understand the absurdity of the charges, it took prosecutors more than a year and a half (that’s how long the investigation in Ivannikova’s case lasted) and another week after on June 2, the Lublin court of the capital found the mother of a four-month-old baby guilty of murder in a state of passion.

The guilty verdict handed down on June 2 to 30-year-old Alexandra Ivannikova aroused public outrage from the very beginning and seemed ridiculous. A year and a half ago, a Muscovite found herself in a story that every woman is afraid of being in. As Alexandra told the court, on December 8, 2003, being left alone and far from home after a quarrel with her husband, she stopped a private owner. Young man for 100 rubles. contracted to deliver the girl to the specified address. But instead of taking her home, 24-year-old Sergei Bagdasaryan, who was driving, turned into a dark courtyard. When Alexandra asked where they were going, the guy replied: “I don’t need your money, you’re a whore and you’ll pay differently.” Then Baghdasaryan blocked the doors (the fact was established by the car inspection report) and began to harass the passenger. If she refused, he threatened to take her to his friends and “let her go in circles.” Then the guy grabbed the girl by the hair and pulled her towards him. According to Ivannikova’s testimony, at that moment she remembered the kitchen knife that was in her purse. The girl always took this weapon with her when she went out on the street late - at the age of 16, Alexandra had already been raped. Having contrived, she poked the knife into the man’s leg. After this, the girl got out of the car and immediately told passing police officers about what had happened. And they found a man already dead in the car - the knife hit the femoral artery, and Bagdasaryan died from loss of blood.

At first glance, the situation was absolutely clear. Witnesses - police officers - testified that Bagdasaryan had his pants and underwear pulled down. No traces of a struggle were found on his body, on the woman’s clothes or in the car, although at the trial it became clear that Alexandra had not been examined. But the state prosecutor, and later the judge (both, by the way, women) considered Ivannikova’s arguments about her actions within the limits of necessary defense to be far-fetched. At first, the crime was classified as intentional infliction of grievous harm, resulting in the death of the victim through negligence. Later the article was changed to “murder committed in the heat of passion.” Alexandra was found guilty of this, sentenced to two years of suspended imprisonment and payment of moral and material compensation in the amount of 206 thousand rubles to the relatives of the deceased.

Immediately after the trial, the defendant's lawyer announced that the verdict would be appealed. Now the Moscow City Court will face two cassation appeals at once. One from the defense, the other from the state prosecution, and both with a demand to acquit the convicted person.

The Moscow City Prosecutor's Office yesterday explained this unexpected turn of the case briefly: “We fulfilled our supervisory function and asked to cancel the conviction and terminate the criminal case against Ivannikova for lack of corpus delicti.”

Ivannikova’s lawyer Alexey Parshin admitted that he learned about the change in the position of the prosecutor’s office only from the morning television news, and only in the afternoon he was given a cassation notice. “It is not clear why the prosecutor’s office saw such an obvious solution to this case only now,” the lawyer said. Alexandra Ivannikova herself yesterday still did not believe this turn of events. “First my husband called me, and then they asked me to make a commentary for the radio. To be honest, this all looks like a fairy tale,” the woman told Vremya Novostei. Meanwhile, the lawyer for Bagdasaryan’s relatives said yesterday that they also intend to appeal both the verdict of the Lublin court (due to the leniency of the punishment imposed on Ivannikova) and the Moscow City Court, if Alexandra is nevertheless acquitted.

Tatiana GRITSENKO