On April 14, Artyom Klepche from Pskov was acquitted by the jury on charges of double murder.

According to the investigation, he hacked to death two people with an ax, including a person who was known to be in a helpless state for the killer, the joint press service of the courts of the Pskov region told RT.

According to the prosecution's version, this crime was committed during the period of convictions not removed and not extinguished in accordance with the procedure established by law.

Upon release from places of deprivation of liberty, administrative supervision was established in relation to him.

Therefore, if a man were found guilty, he would face severe punishment - up to life imprisonment.

However, the jury found that there was not enough evidence of his guilt, and in October 2020, they delivered a verdict that the defendant was not involved in the crime.

Pskovich was released from custody right in the courtroom.

The prosecutor's office appealed the verdict.

The case was sent for a new trial, but the jury acquitted him again. 

Quadruple justified

Cases like Klepche happen all the time.

In July last year, a jury in Crimea acquitted a 26-year-old man for the fourth time accused of beating and murdering a 54-year-old citizen.

The Supreme Court of the Republic three times returned the case for new consideration, the last time it even had to change the territorial jurisdiction, since there were no judges left in the district court of first instance who did not consider this case (according to the law, it is necessary to consider each time with a new composition of the court. 

- RT

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In the summer of 2018, the jury for the second time acquitted a Muscovite accused of murdering three people - his parents and brother.

But not always an acquittal remains in force even after a second sentence.

So, in the summer of 2019, a student from Samara was sentenced to 8 years in prison for selling drugs on an especially large scale, despite the fact that before that she was acquitted twice by a jury. 

At the same time, in jury trials the chances of acquittal are ten times higher than in ordinary ones.

So, according to the judicial department of the Supreme Court, in 2020 the number of acquittals amounted to only 0.34% of all court decisions.

But, as calculated at the Institute for Law Enforcement Problems, the share of acquittals in jury trials in the first half of 2020 at the regional level was 21.9%, at the district level - 29.8%.

However, a fair number of such decisions were later canceled.

Thus, in the first half of 2020, the appellate courts overturned 87.8% of all acquittals issued by district courts with the participation of juries.

In total, during this period, 57 such decisions were made, 50 sentences were canceled.

At the same time, accusatory verdicts are canceled much less often, it follows from the same statistics.

So, in the first half of 2020, only 19.5% of such decisions made by the jury of district courts were canceled.

Alleged violations

A retired judge, professor at the Higher School of Economics and Honored Lawyer of Russia Sergey Pashin explained to RT that, in accordance with Art.

389.25 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Russian Federation there are only two legal grounds for canceling a jury sentence.

  • Retired federal judge Sergei Pashin

  • RIA News

  • © Artem Zhitenev

“An acquittal, rendered on the basis of a jury verdict, must be canceled if, with an unclear and contradictory verdict, the presiding judge did not indicate to the jury that it was unclear and inconsistent,” says Pashin.

- For example, when the same issues are resolved in different ways, people are judged in complicity, but one is imputed something, and the other is forgotten.

Or one was convicted with some proviso, and the other was not. "

Also, Pashin continues, the verdict “can be overturned on the proposal of the prosecutor or the complaint of the victim in the presence of significant violations of the criminal procedure law, which limited the right of the prosecutor or the victim to present evidence, or influenced the content of the questions posed to the jury or their answers to them.” 

“That is, we are talking about serious violations that constitute a fundamental defect in the proceedings,” the expert emphasizes.

Lawyer Alexey Ukolov notes that these violations are often imaginary.

As an example, he cites a recent case from his own practice, when his client, accused of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm (part 4 of Article 111 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation), was acquitted by the jury three times. 

For the first time, according to Ukolov, the case was considered by a panel of 6 people in the district court, which issued an acquittal.

But then the prosecutor's office and the victim appealed against the verdict.

“As a“ violation ”it was indicated that in my speech I allegedly had an illegal influence on the jury.

And I just cited a quote from a well-known colleague that "justice is too serious a thing to trust his lawyers."

This was one of the circumstances on the basis of which the higher instance overturned the verdict, although nowhere in the law is there a prohibition on citing other lawyers in the presence of a jury. "

"Non-legal practice"

There are other circumstances on the basis of which the courts overturn acquittals.

“According to the law, it is prohibited to touch upon issues that may cause prejudice against the defendant - to say that he has been previously convicted, has drug or alcohol addiction.

But the courts interpret this requirement so broadly that they generally forbid any information about the personality of the defendant to be discussed, the presence of children, for example, ”explains Sergei Pashin.

Also, he continues, the court may consider it a violation to indicate that the crime was committed by another person.

“If the accused says that it was not he who set fire to the house, but a neighbor, for example, this can also lead to the cancellation of the acquittal,” the expert says.

“They still do not allow the accused and his defense to talk about the torture that was used against him,” Pashin continues.

For all of the above, he continues, there are no legal prohibitions.

“These are invented violations based on the practice of the Supreme Court, but this practice is completely not legal,” the expert is convinced.

There are also more curious cases.

“Once, a few days after the verdict was passed, one of the lawyers went with the jury to a restaurant to celebrate the happy ending of the case.

Celebrated with the money of the acquitted.

The feast was filmed on camera, and then shown in court - they say, look at our arbitrators.

This gave rise to an appeal against the verdict based on the verdict of these jurors, and as a result it was overturned, ”says lawyer Valentin Karelin. 

“At the same time, the same action in the case of a guilty verdict is not perceived as a violation entailing the cancellation of the verdict, and in the case of an acquittal, the same action is regarded as inevitably influencing the jury and entailing the cancellation of the verdict,” says lawyer, adviser to the federal chamber of lawyers Sergey Nasonov.

"The prosecutor knows everything"

According to the law, a juror must be at least 25 years old, not registered with the PND, be legally capable and not have unredeemed or unreleased convictions.

However, data on the personality of the jury that are not included in this list may also become grounds for canceling the acquittal, says Sergei Pashin.

“For example, the juror forgot to say that he was tried a year ago, even though he has no convictions now.

Or in general, some of his nephews were once brought to administrative responsibility.

The court concludes that the jury did not provide full information about themselves, and overturns the verdict - not because someone is being tried, but because the juror did not answer truthfully to the question, although he might not know this information or forget about them, ”the expert explains.

“The prosecutor knows everything about the jury already on the second day of work.

He makes inquiries about them and can keep a certain trump card in his sleeve: if an acquittal is passed, he will present this information to the court, and the verdict will be canceled, ”adds Pashin.

“There is a deep verification of personal information about the jury, their relatives, families,” Sergei Nasonov agrees with him.

“In my understanding, this is absolutely unacceptable, because jurors are the same judges, their status is equal to that of a judge, which means that their personal data should also be completely inviolable.

But in very many cases, the acquittal is canceled because the prosecutor presented evidence that the jury concealed something during the formation of the collegium, ”adds the lawyer.

Revenge for an acquittal

But even if the acquittal persists, there is no guarantee that the criminal prosecution will end there.

An example is the case of the Moscow businessman Ilya Averyanov.

  • Ex-owner of the Menshevik factory Ilya Averyanov, acquitted by the jury in the case of the murder of a security guard, after the verdict was announced in the Moscow City Court

  • RIA News

  • © Evgeny Biyatov

The former owner of the Menshevik confectionery factory was accused of killing a security guard in 2017 during a shootout at the factory.

The investigation then considered that the people who came to the factory wanted to recover the debt from Averyanov, and he opened fire on the bailiffs and representatives of the creditor in order to prevent them from carrying out enforcement actions.

The businessman himself stated that he was the victim of a raider takeover, he was ruined with the help of forged documents and they are trying to take away the factory, and the shot at the security guard was a tragic accident.

Averyanov was arrested in December 2017 and faced up to 20 years in prison.

In January 2020, he was acquitted by a jury in the Moscow City Court.

The victims tried to appeal the verdict twice - in the appeal and cassation instances, but in the summer of 2020 the Supreme Court finally upheld it.

In April 2021, a new criminal case was opened against Averyanov - this time on attempted murder.

“Averyanov is charged with attempted murder of three persons on the territory and in the premises of the KF Menshevik factory.

According to the investigation, Averyanov shot twice at Radjabov and Abramov, and also once at the bailiff Bokov, wishing to prevent the execution of executive actions in this way, "the entrepreneur's lawyer Andrei Bastrakov told RT.

“The case was initiated on the basis of materials isolated from the criminal case, which ended in an acquittal, but the selection of materials was made in violation of the norms of the criminal procedure law,” the lawyer said. 

Averyanov's defense attorney is sure that this story should be perceived as “revenge on the part of opponents for an acquittal, because earlier the investigation did not see any grounds for initiating a criminal case”.

“Opponents of Averyanov in the press have repeatedly expressed their surprise at the outcome of the case.

When he was released, he continued to seek the initiation of a criminal case in connection with the alienation of the factory buildings.

A new criminal case against him may slow down this process, ”explains the lawyer.

Weak evidence

At the same time, among the verdicts of the jury and the verdicts passed on their basis, there are many paradoxical ones, causing surprise and bewilderment in society.

Thus, many citizens were indignant at the acquittal of Nikolai Mishin, accused of murdering an 8-year-old girl from the Krasnodar Territory.

Or the murder of a man by passers-by at the Kursk railway station - a man was killed just because, in the opinion of the attacker, the attacker, he was of a non-traditional sexual orientation. The crime was committed in conditions of obviousness, right under the surveillance cameras. As the media wrote, the prosecution had enough evidence - this is the weapon of the crime, and the recordings of the cameras, and the testimony of witnesses. But the jury acquitted the murderer anyway.

“Such stories are the main point of criticism of the jury. The very nature of this institution is such in all countries where it exists - the USA, Russia. In a jury trial, you cannot get them to substantiate their verdict, motivation, like professional judges - they can simply make a decision on emotions, guided by their sense of justice, intuition, sometimes - compassion, if, for example, a person is found guilty, and a question is posed to them whether he deserves indulgence. The jury will only answer "yes" or "no" to the questions posed. At the same time, in the Russian legal order, they must strive "to make unanimous decisions" (part 1 of Art. 343 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation), and this is almost the only requirement for the motivation of their verdict, "lawyer Valentin Karelin tells RT.

“The jury is discussing questions of fact, not law. They cannot say they disagree with the qualifications. If the lawyers convinced them during the hearing that the crime had to be qualified differently, not as murder, for example, but as something else (serious bodily, leading to death), and the jury agree with this, for them the only option is to answer “ no "to the question posed, because they can either fully agree with the accusation, or completely reject it," the lawyer explains. “This explains many of the cases that seem to justify the murderers by the jury. It's just that they, not being ready to admit that the defendant has a direct intent to deprive a person of life, at the same time can easily not consider him innocent, ”the lawyer explains.  

“Often, acquittals are associated with a lack of evidence,” says Sergei Pashin.

"If the prosecution does not provide convincing evidence, the jury will not condemn the person, take sin on the soul."

“When such paradoxical verdicts are issued, this is due to the fact that the jury could not see the position of the defense in the questionnaire, since the court simply did not indicate it there.

As a result, the jury, if they trust the defense more, but do not see its position in the questionnaire, will answer the questions of the prosecution in the negative, ”says Sergei Nasonov.

“The jury does not establish what happened in reality, in fact. They are asked a question in a different formulation: "has it been proven that the crime event took place", "has it been proven that the defendant committed it?" That is, they need to be given an answer to a simpler question: did the particular prosecutor manage to convince the collegium with his evidence in this process? And if the prosecutor presented the evidence illiterately, presented them unsystematically, got confused and confused the board - the acquittal verdict in this case will be the result of his activities, ”the expert concludes.

Today very few cases are heard by jury trials, only a few hundred a year.

For comparison, in 2019, a total of 749,000 criminal cases were considered by Russian courts.

But in 2018, a reform of this type of legal procedure began - jury sessions were extended to the level of district courts.

“Before that, there were only 100 courts in the country, where there were juries - regional, territorial, Supreme courts of the republics and military district courts.

And 2200 courts have been added, which means that the number of cases should increase by 22 times.

But this did not happen, "says Sergei Pashin.

According to Sergei Nasonov, the number of cases considered by the jury has nevertheless increased since the beginning of the reform.

“If before it was considered about 200 cases a year, now there are already 700-800.

The reform is still ongoing, and gradually these numbers will grow, ”the lawyer is sure.