Stop the Untouchables. Justice for Sergei Magnitsky.

Editorial: “Trial After Death”

Vedomosti

Absurdity is becoming a reality. Sergey Magnitskiy, the Hermitage Capital attorney who died (or was murdered, according to human rights advocates) in November 2009 in the Matrosskaya Tishina pre-trial detention facility, might be put on trial. The MVD [Ministry of Internal Affairs] Department of Investigations reported yesterday that his case file might be turned over to one of the courts in the capital soon.

The investigators’ actions in the Magnitskiy case are surprising for many reasons. Putting a dead man on trial when the people responsible for his death were never punished will be perceived as a subtle insult to the memory of the deceased and to his family and friends. According to many experienced attorneys and law enforcement personnel, they have never been involved in the criminal prosecution or defense of deceased individuals. Proceedings in which the accused died long before the trial were characteristic of the Inquisition or the Stalin era (the case of the conspiracy in the Red Army, for example, and the Doctors’ Plot). Rehabilitation proceedings, in which the case is reviewed in light of new evidence, are the only exception.

The problem, however, is not confined to the moral aspect of the future trial. The legal grounds for simultaneous proceedings against a live individual and one who died more than two years ago are questionable. Cases of this type are often separated for the quick cessation of the prosecution of the deceased. The line of reasoning for the reopening of the case is also questionable. The reader may recall that the criminal prosecution of the Hermitage Capital attorney was originally terminated soon after his death, in spring 2010. In August 2011 the General Prosecutor’s Office rescinded the order to close the case, citing the Constitutional Court ruling of 14 July 2011. Sections 24 and 254 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, allowing a case to be closed following the death of a suspect, an accused individual, or a defendant without the consent of the relatives of the deceased, were declared unconstitutional by the court at that time. “The denial of the opportunity to assert an individual’s rights and legal interests in a criminal trial … would be tantamount to the disparagement of that individual’s honor and dignity by the state,” the judges declared.