Window on Eurasia

Some Russian Officials Want to End Jury Trials in Hate Crime Cases

Paul Goble

Vienna, July 31 – A recent spate of high profile trials in which Russian juries have refused to convict individuals charged with hate crimes against ethnic and religious minorities has prompted the Social Chamber’s Commission on Tolerance and Freedom of Conscience to call for an end to jury trials in such cases.

The commission’s appeal, issued on Friday, said that this change was
required because “part of [Russian] society is inflected by
xenophobia and intolerance toward representatives of minorities and foreigners
with dark skin.” As a result, some Russians won’t convict those who
commit crimes against members of such groups.
The document added that it is also the case that some Russian juries
are unwilling to return guilty verdicts in such cases is that there is
evidence that jurors “fear for their own security [if they do so] and
the government is not in a position to guarantee their defense”
[http://www.polit.ru/event/2006/07/28/prisas.html].

And the appeal suggested that “highly professional judges” rather
than jurors should render justice in such cases “to avoid farces and
obvious errors.” Valeriy Tishkov, the commission’s chairman, said
this was particularly needed because often jurors in such cases are not
selected with sufficient care.

Also on Friday, Igor’ Rimmer, the representative of the St.
Petersburg legislative assembly’s commission for work with religious
confessions, voiced his support for the commission’s recommendation to do away
with jury trials in the cases of hate crimes and require that justice be
rendered by judges acting alone.

Indeed, Rimmer continued, it “would make sense” to require that all
“cases which generate a large amount of resonance in society and
therefore have social importance” be decided “by professional
judges and not by jurrors.”

The Commission’s appeal is also likely to find support among
prosecutors and investigators who not only regularly complain that
ordinary citizens do not know enough to render judgment and who are far
more likely to return not guilty verdicts than are judges.

But however appalling the decisions of Russian juries have been in the
cases of the murders of foreign students and journalists and in the
cases of “hooligan” attacks on ethnic and religious minorities,
this call for an end to jury trials in hate crimes represents an implicit
indictment of Russian society and the country’s judicial system.

To suggest that xenophobia and ethnic and religious prejudice are now
so widespread in Russia that the only way to achieve justice in hate crime
cases is to do away with jury trials is to make an indictment of that
country far more damning than almost any of its critics could conceive
of.

And to assume that there are no other ways to address this problem is
to ignore what other countries have done and what the Russian government
itself could in fact seek to do. Besides longterm educational programs
in tolerance, whose importance should not be ignored, there are three
steps Moscow could take without sacrificing trials by jury.

First, the Russian government could insist on better preparation by
prosecutors in such cases. Various journalists and analysts have noted
that sometimes the prosecution has not done its homework or presented
it well, assuming that the horror of particular crimes will be sufficient
to gain a conviction.

Second, the Russian authorities could develop a serious system of
protection for jurors in high profile cases. That is what the United
States and certain other countries have done, but up to now, Moscow has
not even begun a discussion of just how it might go about protecting
those who are called upon to render justice.

And third, the Russian authorities could make use of existing legal
procedures to appeal decisions in such cases, demanding the review of
one or another aspect of a case by appellate courts. Again, that is not
something the Russian authorities have chosen to do even when they
could.

Sacrificing the principle of trial by jury in the name of justice may
seem reasonable given the horrific nature of the crimes whose authors
Russian juries are refusing to convict. But such a step, however
well-intentioned, entails consequences that almost certainly will
undermine not only justice but other rights as well.

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