The jurors in the case of neonatologist Elina Sushkevich and the former acting chief physician of the Kaliningrad maternity hospital No. 4 Elena Belova, accused of murdering a newborn, complained of pressure from the judge, Medvestnik reports . Now the case is in the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction after the verdict of the Moscow Regional Court on September 6, 2022. According to four jurors, the judge went into their room and convinced the defendants of their guilt.
Elina Sushkevich's lawyer, Kamil Babasov, admitted that this is the first time he has encountered such a precedent. He hopes that "the court will reflect" after hearing the revelations of the jurors, who were questioned about the presence of violations during the process, "and will consider these arguments weighty."
In addition, one of the jurors, who was absent from the last meeting before the verdict, spoke of being detained by police on a "spurious pretext" on his way to the courtroom. At the police station, he was detained until noon.
The next hearing of the Court of Appeal is scheduled for April 26. On this day, after the defendants have spoken their last word, the three judges must decide on their case. Doctors' lawyers hope that the verdict, handed down in the fall of 2022, will be canceled, after which the case will be returned to the Moscow Regional Court. Now Sushkevich and Belova are in jail.
The investigation alleged that in November 2018, Belova ordered Sushkevich to kill a newborn in maternity hospital No. 4 “to save hospital resources and meet medical statistics” with an injection of magnesium sulfate.
The defendants were repeatedly supported by other doctors, including President of the National Medical Chamber Leonid Roshal and Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Volodin. In 2020, the jury acquitted Belova and Sushkevich, but the prosecutor's office appealed this decision and returned the case to the Moscow Regional Court.
In September 2022, the doctors were found guilty. They were sentenced to 9 and 9.5 years in a general regime colony. Sushkevich and Belova themselves denied their guilt in the last word.
Earlier it became known that the Chelyabinsk maniac Alexander Korochkin, who was sentenced to 20 years in a strict regime colony for murders and rapes committed in 2004, may be innocent.
After his detention, several more crimes of a similar nature occurred in the region, the investigation did not present weighty evidence, and the complaints of Korochkin's lawyer had no effect.
One year remains before the end of his term. In 2022, a pistol was found in the things of a deceased hunter from Chelyabinsk, which, as the investigation found out, was used during the murders in the forest park zone, which were attributed to Korochkin.