"Swamp" fate

Three weeks have passed since the announcement of the conviction against eight accused by events in Bolotnaya Square in May 2012. “Swamp affairs” are nevertheless continued: at the end of March, the appeal will be considered in the decision in the case of Mikhail Kosenko (I recall it, by the court’s decision, they sent an unlimited forced treatment, recognizing the insanity and dangerous for society. So far the decision has not entered into force, Kosenko is in jail), the trials at which Sergei Udaltsov and Leonid Razzhaev are acting. As for the main group of "Bolotnikov" (and their lawyers have already appealed the verdict), I, as a person who has experience of unfair criminal conviction, return to the thoughts of their fate again and again.

The chairman of the Zamoskvoretsky District Court of Moscow Natalya Nikishina, as you know, agreed on February 24 with the arguments of the prosecution and found the accused guilty of criminal offenses. I cannot make judgments about the justice of the conviction, since it is not familiar with all the materials of the criminal case. It would be possible to do this if an audio recording of the entire process was posted on the Internet. Unfortunately, there is still no such practice, and any type of digers and reviews cannot serve as a sufficient basis for a complete assessment of the circumstances of the case. I do not lose hope that someday there will be complete audio recordings of processes on the Internet-and not only for resonant matters, but in all without exception.

However, the information that was opened, I have enough,

Someday, judges in Russia will master new legislation and, under public control, will make fair decisions

In order to bear the reasonable judgment on the injustice of the sentenced to the accused who is sentenced to imprisonment. The fact is that according to the law, the punishment is established by the judge, taking into account the personality of the convict. Judge Nikishin established the seven accused (Alexander Naumova-Dukhanin received a suspended sentence) imprisonment with serving a sentence in a general regime colony. But, according to Article 78 of the Criminal Executive Code of the Russian Federation, the convicts are transferred from a colony of general regime to a colony-settlement to serve a quarter of the appointed deadline. Since all seven convicts were detained in jail during the preliminary investigation and the court for more than a year, and the deadlines appointed by him were less than four years, the judge could not appoint them a species of correctional institution to serve imprisonment in the form of a colony of general regime. Only in the form of a colony-settlement.

This is precisely what is in this case, taking into account the identity of the convict - that it was this person who has already left the term in the colony of general regime (at one time was even speech to count the day in the pre -trial detention center for two days of the colony of general regime, for more severe conditions). Therefore, I am a punishment established by Judge Nikishina, not fair and not relevant to the law.

I can assume the reason for such a judicial error. The fact is that Judge Nikishina graduated from the Law Institute in 1992, i.e. before the adoption of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, the new Criminal Code of the Russian Federation, and the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, and the Criminal Executive Code of the Russian Federation. There is reason to believe that the judge was sentenced, guided by the old, still Soviet laws, which she studied and whose knowledge she had verified in the manner established by law and educational practice. It is not required to explain that old Soviet laws differ from new Russian not in detail, but fundamentally.

At the place of lawyers, I would draw the attention of a higher court to the injustice of the established punishment by the type of correctional institution, and at the same time (since the deadlines are already coming to the time of consideration of the appeal), I would advise you to ask for a sentence not related to imprisonment - conditional. It is fundamentally that it will not turn out to be a parole, since the sentence will not yet enter into legal force), namely, conditional punishment, taking into account the identities of the convicts, since they will already whistle the due sentences for non-injury to their punishment in the form of imprisonment.

Someday, judges in Russia will master new legislation and, under public control, will make fair decisions. I do not lose hope for it.

Valentin Danilov is a physicist-physicist, former director of the thermophysical center in Krasnoyarsk. In 2001, he was arrested on suspicion of disclosing state secrets, in 2004 he was sentenced to 14 years in a maximum security colony. Conditionally released in 2012. Danilov’s case was one of the most high -profile processes over scientists and, as human rights activists believe, with serious violations of the procedural code