#1 - JRL 7276
RosBusinessConsulting
August 4, 2003
First jury trial starts in Moscow
A jury trial has started in the Moscow City Court, for the first time in post-Soviet Russia. At the first hearing, a jury of 14 will be selected from a jury list of 45 names.
They will consider the case of Igor Bortnikov, a 25 year old resident of the Moscow region who is accused of robbery, murder and the theft of a passport. According to the prosecution, Igor Bortnikov and three of his friends killed Mr. Shepenkov on Osennyaya Street in Moscow on October 4, 2001, in order to take his Mercedes car.
Jury trial was introduced in Moscow on July 1, according to amendments to the Russian Criminal Code. Judge Petr Shtunder of the Moscow City Court told RBC that jurymen were selected and summoned to the court at random.
He listed groups of citizens who cannot act as jurymen: people stripped of voting rights or under 25 years of age, people with unexpunged convictions, invalids, elderly citizens, people who don’t speak a state language, heads of representative and executive agencies and their deputies, the military, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, top officials and investigators of the Interior Ministry’s agencies, employees of the Federal Security Service, and clergymen.
According to Petr Shtunder, grave and especially grave criminal cases can be tried by a jury, including premeditated murders, kidnappings, slave trade, terrorism, hostage taking and the organization of illegally armed bands. In his opinion, jury trials are a new form of legal proceedings, radically changing the essence and contents of a criminal trial, and turning a judge into an impartial arbiter.
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