Q Toon: From the Highest Court

 

The trial Olympic athlete and WNBA star Brittney Griner, accused of having cannabis oil in a vape cartridge when she arrived at the Moscow airport last winter, is set to begin sometime in the next few weeks. She was seen arriving for a pre-trial hearing last week, and a letter from her to President Biden asking for him to intervene on her behalf became public this week.

Clearly, she doesn't have much confidence in the Russian judicial system letting her return home any time soon.

My cartoon lawyer for her presents a gloomier picture for Mrs. Griner than the Russian legal system theoretically affords. She will, in fact, have an opportunity to address the court at the beginning of her trial and again before the judge, lay assessors, and/or jury decide on a verdict.* 

On the other hand, she is obviously being used as a political pawn toward the release of a Russian citizen convicted in the U.S. ten years ago of illegal arms dealing. Arms dealing vs. a trace of THC oil... yeah, sure, that's an even trade.

You can ask Alexei Navalny how fair the Russian judicial system is. (Well, no, you probably can't.) Russia having become under Vladimir Putin a highly autocratic state, even if Mrs. Griner should get a fair trial and either acquittal or sent home with a fine, authorities may not be done with her. Consider this:

The shakiness of the presumption of innocence in Russian criminal trials is reflected by the fact that acquittals are almost nonexistent. They occurred in only 0.36 percent of all cases in 1998. During the perestroika years the Soviet public was shocked by many stories of innocent people having been convicted due to coerced or tortured confessions and this was one reason why reforms were pushed, among them, that of returning to trial by jury. Indeed, juries have acquitted substantially more than nonjury courts, anywhere from 18–22 percent of the time. A disturbing development has been the refusal of law enforcement organs to accept acquittals. For instance, in November 1999 in Moscow, officers of the Federal Security Service, the successor of the KGB, entered a courtroom in camouflage uniforms and black masks and re-arrested two defendants who had been acquitted at trial by a military court. Such occurrences are not rare.

And that's before Mr. Putin became President.

✍

I'm gradually making adjustments to my fictional lawyer for Mrs. Griner (first appearing here), including reversing the N's and R's in his dialogue balloons — realizing, of course, that they are not the Cyrillic equivalent of Roman N's and R's.

Check back on Saturday for some further thoughts on How To Draw A Russian.

✍

*Update: Brittney Griner has entered a guilty plea, according to this morning's news reports. That does not necessarily mean that the trial skips ahead to sentencing; the prosecution is still allowed to present its case.