October 01, 2019, 00:52 / Opinions

Everyone is conditionally guilty

Replacing a real sentence with a suspended sentence for the defendant in the “Moscow case” Pavel Ustinov is actually a declaration of the presumption of guilt for everyone

Pavel Aptekar

Vladimir Ruvinsky , editorial writer

Maria Zheleznova , editorial writer

The guilty verdict, despite clear and convincing evidence of innocence, against Pavel Ustinov, handed down by the judicial panel of the Moscow City Court on Monday, is a diagnosis of the Russian judicial and law enforcement systems, in fact, a declaration of the presumption of guilt of any person who happens to be in the affected area of Russian law. This is a clear signal to society: the state, in whose name justice is administered, by default considers all citizens guilty and instills in them the idea that they can only fight in court for a reduced sentence, but not for the acquittal of an innocent person. By signing up to such verdicts, the state makes cynicism the most obvious state ideology: such a state can be feared, but cannot be respected.

Replacing a suspended sentence with a real one, as in the case of Ustinov, is not the first and, unfortunately, not the last, episode of the specific humanism of Russian courts. “Condition” regularly turns out to be the only euphemism of justification available to the judicial system in high-profile cases with political overtones, and then often knocked out under the strongest pressure from society: for example, the replacement of a real sentence with a suspended sentence for the opponent of the head of Russia Alexei Navalny in the Kirovles case in 2013 is also heard. d. Such compromises are an attempt to minimize damage both for the state and for the convicted person, but it is an awkward attempt: the half-heartedness of such “leniency” is obvious to both sides.

So they are trying to pass off the new sentence to Pavel Ustinov as a triumph of humanism and evidence of the state’s readiness to mitigate obvious injustice. However, he once again demonstrated to ordinary people and citizens the dependence of the court on the power branch of government. The coincidence of the Moscow City Court’s decision with the opinion of the director of the Russian Guard, Viktor Zolotov, on the desired punishment for Ustinov (expressed almost two weeks before the court hearing) is further confirmation of this. This verdict is also unequivocal evidence that the authorities, which are still called law enforcement, consider Russians to be consumables for their operational and investigative combinations on the principle “if there is a person, there will be an article.” “Well, there was a man who aroused suspicion <...> He was standing on the phone, you never know what kind of actions he could coordinate” - these are the key testimonies that, obviously, formed the basis for the conviction of Ustinov (quote from Mediazona). Only in this system of coordinates can a suspended sentence not for the perpetrator, but for the victim of arbitrariness, be considered as a favor of the state formalized by the court.

But this should not be confusing: even after studying all the evidence, even considering all the examinations, even replacing the category of gravity of the crime from grave to moderate, even reducing the sentence and rewriting it from real to conditional, the court left the main thing unchanged: it found the victim guilty and did not admit the guilt of those who made the victim a victim.

In recent years, Russians, thanks to high-profile cases, the publicity of trials and social networks, have begun to better understand that arbitrariness can hit not only political activists or businessmen, but also ordinary people whose life trajectory intersected with a policeman, investigator, bailiff who needed “case” and a “stick” for reporting, for which they are ready to falsify evidence and fabricate a case. The presumption of innocence in such circumstances turns into a presumption of guilt - not yet formulated, but therefore no less real: for at least a year, conditionally, everyone has already earned it, obviously, by the fact of birth.

Understanding such an attitude cannot but generate indignation in society - albeit not total yet, but already quite loud and clear. For the court, as follows from the commentary of the Moscow City Court on Ustinov’s criminal case, it is easier to see in this “unacceptable interference in the administration of justice, a manifestation of disrespect for the court” from people “who do not always have special knowledge in the field of law.” But distrust in the courts did not appear yesterday. Sociologist Vladimir Prokhoda, based on the results of a European social survey, found that in 2017 Russia ranked 19th among 23 European countries in terms of trust in the judicial system. It was significantly inferior not only to the Scandinavian countries or Great Britain and Germany, but also to Estonia, Lithuania and the Czech Republic and was ahead only of Poland, Portugal, Spain and Slovenia.

By asserting the rule of force rather than the law, demonstrating the obvious guilt of almost any person, the state only fuels legal nihilism, convinces ordinary people that it is almost impossible to achieve compliance with rights by legal means, and instills in them not respect for the law, but fear of the state. But even a very frightened person sooner or later gets tired of being afraid.