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Yalanzhi & PartnersCriminal defence in Russia

Case results

Verdict quashed and remitted for fresh hearing — Article 132, appeal

Article 132 of the Criminal CodeAppealVerdict quashed

Before

Conviction

After

Verdict quashed, case remitted for a fresh hearing

How

Breaches in the assessment of evidence and of witness testimony.

The situation

A conviction under Article 132. The defence identified defects in how the trial court had assessed the evidence and the testimony it rested on.

The result

The appeal court quashed the verdict and sent the case back to be heard again.

In detail

Analysis

What "remitted for a fresh hearing" means

The conviction ceases to exist and the case returns to the first-instance court to be tried again from the beginning, before a different judge. It is not an acquittal, and families should not be told that it is. It is a reset — and in a case where the first hearing produced a conviction on a flawed assessment of the evidence, a reset is a substantial result.

Why the assessment of evidence is a ground and not a complaint

Article 88 of the Criminal Procedure Code requires each piece of evidence to be assessed for relevance, admissibility and reliability, and the whole body of it for sufficiency. A verdict that recites the prosecution evidence and does not explain why the defence evidence was rejected has not done that. Article 389.16 makes findings unsupported by the evidence examined in the hearing a ground for quashing — which is what distinguishes this from simply disagreeing with the outcome.

Published in summary form with identifying details removed. A result obtained in one case is not a prediction for another: outcomes depend on the evidence, the classification and the procedural history of the specific case.

See also

Other case results