Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

The state prosecuting attorney dropped the investigation’s initial charges under Article 30 Section 3 and Article 105 Section 2 Item N of the CC RF – attempted murder of Potapova and Tyapkin, as well as under Article 317—attempt on the life of police officer Volkov, as the court requalified the defendant’s acts. The reasons were that Sukhaya consciously didn’t carry through the murder of any of the victims and that officer Volkov’s visit to Potapova was not work-related.

According to the comprehensive forensic drug testing and psychiatric assessment, Sukhaya had no chronic mental disorder but showed psychopathic traits associated with chronic alcoholism. She was able to recognize that her actions were real and socially dangerous, and she had control over her actions. This meant that Sukhaya should be considered sane with regard to the acts. As someone suffering from second stage chronic alcoholism, Sukhaya required compulsory anti-alcohol treatment, for which she had no contraindications.

The expert reports did not contradict the case file and corresponded with the testimonies on the defendant’s mental state. Therefore, the judicial board decided that Sukhaya was criminally liable for her acts.

In fact, the medical report corresponded to the information on the defendant’s personality provided by the victims and witnesses, as the experts found chronic alcoholism in her. Therefore, the judicial panel found it necessary to order compulsory medical treatment along with a prison sentence. In accordance with Article 97 Section 1 Item G and Article 99 Section 2 of the CC RF, Sukhaya was to undergo mandatory outpatient psychiatric treatment for her alcoholism.

In determining the penalty, the judicial board took note of all the circumstances of the crimes, the severity and social danger of the acts, the defendant’s attitude to what she did and the negative characteristics of her personality, one mitigating circumstance, and the lack of aggravating circumstances.

The mitigating circumstance was that the defendant had an underage child.

Guided by Articles 301–303 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Russian Federation, the judicial board sentenced Sukhaya to long-term imprisonment in a general penal colony and ordered her to undergo compulsory outpatient psychiatric observation and treatment for alcoholism.

The convict did not agree with the court verdict and appealed against it, claiming that both pre-trial and judicial investigations were incomplete. Sukhaya argued that the court neither considered her relationship with Tyapkin nor found all of the mitigating evidence.

However, the Judicial Board on Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation found Sukhaya’s arguments untenable and baseless, leaving the district court verdict unchanged and dismissing her cassation appeal.[161]

What remained outside the scope of the verdict and proceedings was some peculiar information regarding Sukhaya’s ex-partners. According to the case file, each one of them had a tragic end. One man was apparently the victim of an unsolved murder – his dismembered and beheaded corpse was found in the landfill. Sukhaya could not identify the body, so her partner was reported missing, and the case was closed. As for the murder of her next partner, the court proved that she was the culprit – but found mitigating circumstances and limited her sentence to probation. Tyapkin was not spared either – he announced in court that he was dying. Who was next?

Having finished the criminal proceedings and taken care of all the organizational and procedural aspects, the judge returned to the Gloomy River, carrying his large bag full of cases of particular importance to the state. He came five minutes before the boat departure. A whole crowd of guys and girls gathered on the bank – they were seeing off the judge’s travel companion, who was going back to jail. The youths greeted the judge politely, and he responded in kind. He felt the respect of those good-hearted and fair-minded young people. Only the helmsman fumbled for the right words.

The journey back up the river was going to take about twelve hours. No one of the crew had slept the night before, all for different reasons. Therefore, for a certain amount of time, the motor boat was moving independently in a certain direction, until the helmsman apparently had a bad dream. At that moment, “Prokhor Gromov abruptly turned the helm, and the prow burrowed down into the bank.”[162] Everyone woke up aground and found that this was the best stopping place along the river. In order to continue the journey, the crew had to work hard to push the craft, undamaged from the crash, back into the water.

Navigation was still closed, so the boat was sailing on the river all alone for two days. According to the 2002 census, the population of the desolate area they were passing through diminished by 58.2 percent since 1989[163]—and later, after a period about as long, more than halved again.

The judge finally reached the town at about midnight. He hurried to the same hotel he had left on the previous day before dawn. All the doors were locked, and there was no light in the windows. The hotel – a two-story wooden house – was named after the owner, who lived in an apartment on the second floor with a separate entrance and staircase. Her entrance was on the open stairway landing exposed to the wind from the river.

The judge squatted next to his heavy bag, which contained cases of six persons sentenced for crimes committed in two northern districts of Siberia against seven victims – two of them murdered. All of those cases were reviewed under standard procedure in only eight days. He presided over every one of the regional judicial panels. All of the verdicts timely and successfully “passed” the Supreme Court unchanged, came into force and were implemented.

What was missing that night was the minutes of the trials, retained by the secretary of the town court. She was pregnant and wanted to