Acquittals in Russian Courts Fall to Only One in Every 670 Cases -- or 0.15 Percent

Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 23 – The number of acquittals in Russian courts is not about one percent as was the case as recently as a decade ago and as many still believe but only 0.15 percent –one in every 670 cases, Elena Yurishina says. And these consist almost exclusively siloviki, judges or people who have been accused not by the authorities but by other private parties.

            The analyst for the Anti-Torture Team reports this in a detailed article for the To Be Precise portal (tochno.st/materials/shansy-poluchit-opravdatelnyy-prigovor-v-rossii-015-isklyucheniy-vsego-tri-dela-protiv-silovikov-sudy-prisyazhnykh-i-chastnoe-obvinenie-rasskazyvaem-na-etikh-primerakh-kak-ustroena-palochnaya-sistema).

            Yurishina points out that these figures, for calendar year 2022, were gathered no by her organization but are contained in the official report of the Judicial Department of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation (cdep.ru/?id=79). What that means is that the real situation may be even worse than Moscow is reporting.

            But her research into the official figures calls attention to the fact that officials and especially those in the force structures are vastly more frequently found innocent compared to those in all other categories, that juries are 100 times more likely to find someone innocent than judges, and that only half of the charges brought by private persons leads to a sentence.

            And the legal specialist concludes with regret that the Russian authorities are doing every thing they can to reduce the number of people found innocent lest not guilty verdicts undermine the authority of the judicial system which itself is an important support for the current Putin regime.