Translated material
The last excuse
The transplant doctors were finally cleared of murder charges
Transplant doctors, twice accused of removing a kidney from a living person, have finally been finally and irrevocably acquitted. Yesterday, the Supreme Court (SC) made its third decision: to recognize the acquittal as legal, and the protest of the prosecutor's office as invalid.The investigation and trials, which lasted for three years, from April 2003, became a real test for two doctors of the Moscow Coordination Center for Organ Donation (MCOD) Pyotr Pyatnichuk and Bairma Shagdurova, as well as doctors of the 20th City Hospital Irina Lirtsman and Lyubov Pravdenko. On that fateful day for them, April 11, a patient with a severe traumatic brain injury was admitted to Hospital No. 20. After carrying out resuscitation measures, the doctors realized that they would not be able to save the patient, but he was suitable as an organ donor. Therefore, it was decided to call a team of transplant doctors, after which they began to prepare for an operation to remove a kidney from the deceased. The doctors were caught doing this by their colleagues from the hospital of the Central Internal Affairs Directorate and the employees of the Moscow Criminal Investigation Department, who suddenly burst into the operating room.
The operatives immediately accused the doctors of planning to remove a kidney from a still living person, and hospital staff allegedly recorded several signs of life in the patient. From that moment on, Pyatnichuk, Shagdurovy, Lirtsman and Pravdenko gained a reputation as killer doctors. And at the trial, the main debate revolved around the question of whether the patient was still alive or already dead when the decision was made to remove his kidney.
The prosecution lost in this dispute, and in March last year the Moscow City Court issued its first acquittal. The Supreme Court did not agree with this position of the first court, overturned the verdict, and everything started anew. However, despite the fact that this time witnesses, experts and specialists were interrogated with particular passion, all documents and regulations regulating the activities of doctors in the field of transplantology were carefully studied, the result was the same. In November 2005, the Moscow City Court, with a different composition of judges, again came to the conclusion that the doctors did not intend to cut a living person, and they were preparing to carry out the operation to remove the kidney after the patient’s death was declared.
And again, the Supreme Court overturned the acquittal, and also clarified in its decision that during the new trial, “a legal assessment of what was done should be given based on the factual circumstances of the case, taking into account the opinion of the prosecution.” The Moscow City Court then regarded this as putting pressure on them, as a direct indication from a higher authority that the next verdict must certainly be guilty, and the very fact of the professionalism of Moscow judges was called into question.
The doctors' lawyers shared the same point of view and decided to use the last opportunity provided to them by law - to appeal the decision of the cassation instance of the Supreme Court in its presidium.
At the meeting of the Presidium of the Supreme Court, representatives of the prosecutor's office, who previously persistently sought the conviction of transplantologists, behaved unexpectedly. In particular, First Deputy Prosecutor General Sabir Kekhlerov admitted that the decision of the cassation instance of the Supreme Court cannot be considered legal if it demands that the opinion of the prosecution be taken into account and does not say a word about the position of the defense. The Presidium decided that the doctors' case should be reconsidered from the stage of appealing the verdict.
And yesterday the long-awaited meeting of the Supreme Court took place, at which the fate of the doctors was to be decided. The prosecutor's office nevertheless attempted to obtain a new trial of the case in the first instance, pointing out that the doctors “did not draw up a report on the death of the patient.” However, this time the prosecution’s arguments did not seem convincing enough to the Supreme Court, and the acquittal of the doctors was upheld. “The position of the prosecutor’s office does not comply with the law. It boiled down to a disagreement with how the court assessed the evidence,” said Mr. Pyatnichuk’s lawyer, Yuriy Kostanov. “But this is wrong, the court carefully examined all the evidence twice, and it is up to him to decide what to believe and what not.” And did the prosecutor's office really believe that for the third time the same witnesses, the same specialists - the best doctors of our country - would give some other testimony? For what, for the sake of supporting the accusers’ uniform? I think that the prosecutor’s office itself did not believe in the guilt of the doctors, otherwise they would not have been left free on charges of execution from the very beginning, but would have been put under arrest.”