Ninth Commandment

Of the three participants in the accident, the investigation and the prosecutor trust two, who gave a receipt for responsibility for giving false testimony, and do not trust the third, who did not give such a receipt.

Of the three participants in the accident, the investigation and the prosecutor trust two, who gave a receipt for responsibility for giving false testimony, and do not trust the third, who did not give such a receipt and could not give it with all his will, since he was in the position of the accused

Do not bear false witness against your neighbor.

(Exodus 20:2-17; Deuteronomy 5:6-21)

"Knowingly false testimony of a witness, a victim, or an expert's opinion, as well as a knowingly incorrect translation in court or in the course of a preliminary investigation - two months, or by compulsory labor for a term of one hundred and eighty to two hundred and forty hours, or by corrective labor for a term of up to two years, or by arrest for a term of up to three months...

(Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, Article 307)

In the Krasnogorsk city court, the hearing of the case on the charge of Petr Dmitriev of committing a crime under part 3 of Art. 264 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation - violation of the Rules of the road, resulting in the death of a person by negligence. Dmitriev is accused of incorrectly choosing the speed of movement in conditions of rain, slippery roads and poor visibility, his car got into a skid, as a result of which an accident involving 3 cars occurred through his fault; three people, including Peter himself, were injured. Subsequently, the passenger of one of the cars died in the hospital.

On September 20, 2013, the judge will hear the last word of the accused and retire to the deliberation room to pass the verdict. So far, dozens of court hearings have taken place. Testimonies of witnesses were heard - drivers and passengers of cars, traffic police officers, experts and specialists.

What happened?

On the night of May 2-3, 2010, Pyotr Dmitriev, in his Mitsubishi Mirage car, was driving home from his dacha to Moscow along the deserted Novorizhskoye highway at that time. In this place, the highway has the status of a highway, the speed limit is 110 km/h. The road has 3 traffic lanes, on the right and on the left - wide shoulders. In the front seat next to Peter was his sister. It was raining heavily, there were puddles on the road. The speed was about 70 km/h. On the 25th kilometer of the highway, a little before reaching the Lukoil gas station, Mitsubishi suddenly got into a skid, the car started spinning and skidding.

Further, the testimony of the participants in the accident diverge. However, the following is known for sure. A Fiat Punto car driven by Marina Yuryevna Braginskaya crashed into the left side of the Mitsubishi with its front bumper. The 19-year-old daughter of Braginskaya was in the front seat, the 71-year-old mother of Ermakova I.E. was in the back seat.

Almost immediately, the Fiat Punto received another blow - a Chevrolet Viva car driven by A.V. Zhilin hit it in the right rear with its left front. In the front seat next to him in the car was his wife (or fiancee at the time).

3 people were injured. P.N. Dmitriev, M.Yu. Braginskaya and I.E. Ermakova were taken away from the scene of the accident in an unconscious state. All three cars were badly damaged. The driver Zhilin and all three passengers in the front seats were not seriously injured and gave their explanations to the traffic police at the scene of the accident.

In the first days after the incident, traffic police officers who went to the scene of the accident compiled reports in which the blame was placed on the Fiat driver, M.Yu. Braginskaya. An administrative case was initiated against her. After 2 weeks, it became known that I.E. Ermakova died in the hospital. The case showed signs of not an administrative, but a criminal offense, and it was transferred from the traffic police to the Investigation Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Investigator S.M. Korneli took up the investigation.

In October 2010, Pyotr Dmitriev became a defendant in a criminal case. M.Yu.Braginskaya received the status of a victim, the other participants - witnesses.

Zhilin and his passenger, Braginskaya and her passenger, during the investigation of the criminal case, testified, the essence of which boils down to the fact that that night the Fiat Punto was moving along the leftmost lane at a speed of 50 km / h, and the Chevrolet Viva at about the same speed I was driving a little behind and to the right - along the middle lane towards Moscow. Suddenly, in both cars, they saw how a dark (without lights and alarms) car drove out from the right side of the road in front of them, as it turned out later, Mitsubishi Dmitrieva. Fiat and Chevrolet began to slow down, but did not have time to prevent a collision. In the far left lane, Fiat collided with a Mitsubishi. The Fiat then swerved into the middle lane, where a Chevrolet drove into it. Since there was a very small distance to Dmitriev's car - 10 meters, when he drove across the road, neither Zhilin nor Braginskaya could avoid a collision, although they slowed down.

Dmitriev and his passenger presented a different picture of what happened. According to them, after skidding, their car stopped in the extreme left lane with the starboard side towards Moscow and stalled. Petr turned on the emergency lights and tried to start the engine to get the car out of the way. A short time later, a Fiat Punto drove into them.

The fact that Dmitriev's car was in motion at the time of the collision is decisive in terms of his guilt. Simplifying somewhat, we can say: if he moved, then he was guilty; if he was standing, there is no causal relationship between his skidding and the accident, it is not his fault.

So, Dmitriev and his passenger say that Mitsubishi was standing, the other participants in the accident confidently declare that it was moving. And here we discover an extremely important feature of our procedural legislation. The fact is that witnesses and victims in criminal proceedings are warned of criminal liability for refusing to testify and, which is essential in our case, for giving knowingly false testimony. But the accused is exempted from such responsibility by the law. He has the constitutional right to refuse to testify against himself or his relatives. If he testifies, he does not bear any responsibility for the lie. Even the proven falsity of testimony, from the point of view of the law, is just the realization of the right to defense on the part of the accused. You can't punish him for it.

On the one hand, the law thus seems to protect the rights of the accused. But there is another side to the issue. It turns out that, from the point of view of the investigation and the court, the probative power of the testimony of witnesses and victims is immeasurably greater than that of the accused. After all, witnesses and victims were warned of responsibility, but the accused was not.

In our case, this led to the fact that out of the three drivers involved in the accident, the investigation and the prosecutor trust two who gave a receipt for responsibility for giving false testimony, and do not trust Dmitriev, who did not give such a receipt and could not give it with all his will, because he was in the position of the accused. Only his sister testifies in favor of Dmitriev (she is a witness, and she was also warned about responsibility), but four are against (besides the drivers, there are also passengers of two other cars)!

The probative force of the testimony given in the presence of the notorious receipt is not limited to superiority over the testimony of the accused. It turns out that the testimonies of witnesses are stronger than their own words, only said earlier, and without an appropriate painting!

As we know, even before the initiation of a criminal case, all participants in the accident gave their explanations to various officials. Particularly interesting are the explanations that were given to traffic police officers at the scene "in hot pursuit." In the file there are handwritten explanations of the Chevrolet driver A.V. Zhilin, his passenger, as well as the passenger of Fiat - M.S. Braginskaya - the daughter of the driver, given at the scene of the accident. So, not one of the witnesses at that moment said a word about any "car that left from right to left", into which the Fiat then crashed.

Zhilin says that "two cars collided ahead of us, one of them was carried out on us." His passenger claims "a red car skidded ahead of us ..." (Fiat Punto - red). Braginskaya, the youngest, says that they were driving at a speed of about 100 km / h and suddenly saw a dark car parked in their lane . Mom began to slow down, but it was not possible to avoid a collision. Subsequently, Braginskaya Jr. claimed that she gave such explanations, being in a state of shock after the accident, where her mother and grandmother suffered, and the details of the explanations were dictated to her by the traffic police officer. This traffic police officer, during interrogation, of course, denied that he could have committed such a gross violation of his job descriptions (and why would he?). However, Braginskaya Jr. I managed to tell about the details of the incident and my friend, a housemate after the death of her grandmother, I.E. Ermakova, that is, more than 2 weeks after the accident, when the state of shock should have passed definitely wasn't). In this story, it was also about a standing car. A friend posted a post condemning Dmitriev on LiveJournal, where, among other things, she twice mentioned a car standing across the road, which served as the root cause of all the troubles. And this LJ page is available in the criminal case.

It should be noted that, accepting the explanations of the participants in the accident, the traffic police officers took from them signatures about responsibility for giving false testimony. That's just the responsibility at that moment was not supposed to be criminal (there was no criminal case yet), but administrative. And they all gave such a receipt - yes, I was warned about administrative responsibility for giving knowingly false testimony. However, it turns out that now, within the framework of a criminal case, such a receipt is also worth nothing. All explanations within the framework of the administrative case, according to the prosecutors, should be excluded on a formal basis: when giving those explanations, people did not yet have the status of witnesses in a criminal case, they were not warned about criminal liability and, therefore, their words mean nothing.

Here, it turns out, how important it is to get the "correct" status in a criminal case. Having received the status of a witness or a victim, you can, after several months of deliberation, give testimony that is beneficial for yourself, and this testimony will be completely trustworthy. If you are unlucky enough to be accused, "everything you say will be used against you," since the current practice regards the testimony of the accused as a means of avoiding responsibility, nothing more.

The case in question is of interest to many. There is a sharp turn in the plot: Braginskaya, a suspect at the stage of an administrative investigation, becomes a victim when the investigator S.M. Korneli began to deal with the case. Here are the autotechnical examinations of the expert Bogachev, with numerous violations and blatant inconsistencies, which were pointed out by many experts whose conclusions are available in the case. However, the expert Bogachev from the Ministry of Internal Affairs was dismissed, after which he did not appear in court, and a number of questions to him remained unanswered ... In 2011-2012. the case was already heard in court, it came to the debate, but then Judge S. Shapovalov (now he has the case again) decided to return him for further investigation due to a number of inconsistencies in the indictment. We can also mention an almost detective story with material evidence missing from the case - the medical records of M.Yu. Braginskaya and I.E. Ermakova. As a result, the question remained unclear, among others, how the data of blood tests contained in these cards with an alcohol content of 0.3 and 7.7 ppm, respectively, should be understood ...

But you can not embrace the immensity. This article is about witnesses and false witnesses. From an everyday point of view, it is quite clear that the witnesses for the prosecution are lying. Their testimonies appeared almost at the same time, they state the circumstances of the case in almost the same clerical language. All that they claimed before is forgotten. However, the court is a formal matter. And formally, everything is the opposite: false testimony is true, and everything that contradicts them is not taken into account. And now Pyotr Dmitriev, a young scientist, virologist (engaged in drugs to combat AIDS, hepatitis, etc.) is waiting for his fate to be decided: the prosecutor demanded 4 years of real imprisonment in a penal colony (maximum under part 3 of article 264 of the Criminal Code - 5 years).

And for perjury, even if it is ever proven, the maximum that threatens is 3 months of arrest. In practice, Article 307 is applied extremely rarely, and in those isolated cases when it comes to court, the punishment is usually a fine.

However, there is also the Ninth Commandment and the Last Judgment. God alone knows when this judgment will take place. In the meantime, on September 20, the last word of the defendant and the verdict are expected in the Krasnogorsk city court.

Maria Aleshina