Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

verdict was delivered against Ivanov and Krasnov. Earlier, the judge had returned that criminal case to the prosecutor without leaving his office – on the same basis as Batyev’s case. The accused men were defending themselves, citing violations of the criminal procedure law. As their claims were legitimate and justified, the judge approved their motions and sent the case for further investigation.

The defendants hoped that “the court will let them go” due to a lack of evidence to the inconspicuous crime. They insisted that Sizykh was murdered by Yershov, as part of Yershov’s shoe was found on the crime scene. The court carefully checked Ivanov and Krasnov’s version before establishing Yershov’s alibi and non-participation in the crime.

Furthermore, Ivanov and Krasnov maintained their innocence, basing their defense on the lack of proof and saying that the knife and the washcloth were never found. Indeed, the investigation had not discovered the knife. However, a little girl from the neighborhood accidentally found the washcloth in a vegetable patch after the snow melted away. That washcloth, originally from Sizykh’s apartment, was the murder weapon. The court found that the place where the item was found was on the defendants’ way from Sizykh’s apartment after the murder.

The court established the following facts. Ivanov and Krasnov came to work in the settlement where Sizykh lived. The two men’s alcohol abuse brought them to Sizykh, who had been drinking for three days at that point. While drinking together in Sizykh’s apartment, they had a quarrel that escalated into a fight. Ivanov and Krasnov beat up Sizykh, shoving him to the ground and kicking on both sides. The psychopath Ivanov was on a tear, jabbing Sizykh’s back and glutes with a knife. Krasnov pinned Sizov, who was still fighting back, to the floor, while Ivanov strangled the victim with a washcloth.

Ivanov and Krasnov were convicted for murder committed by a group of persons and sentenced to long-term imprisonment in a high security penal colony.[153]

As both Ivanov and Krasnov pleaded not guilty, they filed cassation appeals against the verdict.

The Judicial Board on Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation upheld the verdict against Ivanov and Krasnov and dismissed their cassation appeals.[154]

The higher judicial panel found it important, among other facts, that the court of first instance established that Sizykh died precisely when the washcloth noose was tightened around his neck. At that moment, Ivanov and Krasnov were in the victim’s apartment. The court had no doubt about the veracity of those circumstances because of the proof examined at trial. Those facts allowed the court to establish a criminal act wherein Ivanov and Krasnov strangled Sizykh to death.

With the long-standing vital purpose of delivering justice, the judge, tired and too lightly dressed, sailed from the town before daybreak, heading towards the Arctic Ocean with a burden of heavy cases in his hands.

2.2. The Housewife Detective

Half a year before the trial, an all-terrain crew change vehicle took on board the witnesses in the case and got them out of a liquidated locality. The industrial settlement was wiped from the map upon order, and its inhabitants were left without state care.

There was a warehouse halfway between the residential barracks and the river. The caretaker of that warehouse disappeared during his night watch. His body was discovered by children picking berries in the woods. A girl and her little brother noticed an old man who was seemingly hugging a boulder protruding from the water in the middle of a mountain river. Inexplicably, the human body hadn’t slipped from the boulder down the river to disappear in the frozen, uninhabited lands. The children brought adults to the scene, and men pulled out Sazonov’s body from the stream of icy water, risking their lives.

The crime was solved by a curious housewife. Following the “hot” trail, she went to the watch house and then down to the river, where she found a lighter belonging to Baranovich. She examined the ground and found two sets of footprints, left by rubber galoshes and boots, running on the sides of what looked like drag marks ending in the water. Such footwear was worn by Baranovich and Huang respectively. She believed that Baranovich was under Huang’s heavy influence since their time served together in a correctional facility. On the eve of the murder, they were drinking together. Huang had an altercation with Sazonov, whom he accused of losing his gun. In her presence, Huang threatened the old man with violence, demanding payment for the lost weapon. She also saw Baranovich in a wet bodysuit after the event, from which she concluded that he had been standing waist-deep in the water.

Everything the housewife detective told was confirmed in court down to the smallest details.

Baranovich and Huang, both psychopathic personalities prone to alcohol abuse, came drunk to the watch house, found the 71-year-old Sazonov, and started a quarrel about the lost gun. During the quarrel, Huang knocked down the caretaker with a hand blow, and Baranovich took him outside. After that, both dragged Sazonov by the arms down to the river with the purpose of murder. They drownedthe man in the river. Baranovich went into the water waist deep and dragged Sazonov underwater along the river bed, head first, face down. Then he let the caretaker’s body float down the river.

Having considered the merits of the case, the court found Huang and Baranovich guilty of murder committed by a group of persons. The men were sentenced to long-term imprisonment in a high security penal colony.[155]

Huang was acquitted on the charge of premeditated moderate bodily injury due to lack of evidence.

Baranovich was acquitted on the charge of threat of murder due to lack of evidence.

The court stroke out from Baranovich and Huang’s charges the undue qualifying features of premeditated murder, such as: murder of another person who is, knowingly for the guilty