{"id":36823,"date":"2023-02-01T06:41:57","date_gmt":"2023-02-01T06:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/?p=36823"},"modified":"2023-02-01T06:41:57","modified_gmt":"2023-02-01T06:41:57","slug":"some-things-are-more-important-than-justice-trial-lawyer-ivan-pavlov-talks-about-the-state-of-russias-judiciary-and-how-treason-cases-are-tried-in-the-country","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cjstudents.com\/index.php\/2023\/02\/01\/some-things-are-more-important-than-justice-trial-lawyer-ivan-pavlov-talks-about-the-state-of-russias-judiciary-and-how-treason-cases-are-tried-in-the-country\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Some things are more important than justice\u2019 Trial lawyer Ivan Pavlov talks about the state of Russia\u2019s judiciary and how treason cases are tried in the country"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"Ivan<\/picture><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n

Ivan Pavlov<\/strong> is a defense attorney specializing in crimes against the state. Since the 1990s, he has defended Russians charged with treason, espionage, and disclosing state secrets. In 2015, he founded Team29, an advocacy group for the right to access government information. The state\u2019s resistance to Pavlov\u2019s initiative eventually forced the group to close. Next, Ivan Pavlov and his colleagues established a new advocacy organization, Department One<\/a>, this time with the mission of helping defendants in non-public trials, where secrecy enables all kinds of manipulations by the prosecution. While representing Ivan Safronov in a recent high-profile treason case, Pavlov himself was arrested<\/a> and charged with violating the investigation\u2019s secrecy. In September 2021, he emigrated to the Republic of Georgia. Deutsche Welle columnist Konstantin Eggert <\/strong>spoke<\/a> with Pavlov in Tbilisi, asking him about Russia\u2019s judiciary, his client\u2019s 22-year prison sentence, the people who work in the FSB, and the lustration that could come to Russia, should the Putin regime collapse. With DW\u2019s and Konstantin Eggert\u2019s permission, Anna Razumnaya<\/strong> summarizes Ivan Pavlov\u2019s remarks from an interview<\/a> that originally appeared on Deutsche Welle\u2019s Russian-language YouTube channel<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Once, Ivan Pavlov recalls, Russia was a country whose courts tried to serve justice.<\/p>\n

That period of \u201cRomantic democracy\u201d in the judiciary lasted from mid-1990s to just after the turn of the millennium. But around 2005\u20132010, Vladimir Putin set out to reform the courts, apparently dissatisfied with the reigning climate of idealism. His strategy was to promote former clerks and other people in relatively low, service positions. The calculation was that, as new judges, these people would bring with them a habitual lack of initiative and a sense of indebtedness to the regime that propelled them to positions of power.<\/p>\n

The expected result has since become apparent. Russia\u2019s judiciary is now less of an independent branch of the government than an organ that responds to signals from the president\u2019s administration by making the desired motions. \u201cAs soon as a judge receives a case,\u201d Pavlov says, \u201che already knows what kind of a decision he has to make.\u201d The percentage of acquittals in Russian criminal justice is currently about 0.17 percent \u2014 lower, that is, than the margin of error.<\/p>\n

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100 convictions and just one acquittal. A new study looks at the past 20 years of Russia’s treason and espionage cases.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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100 convictions and just one acquittal. A new study looks at the past 20 years of Russia’s treason and espionage cases.<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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What does it mean to defend someone in court under these adversarial conditions? And how do attorneys go about defending their clients?<\/p>\n

The \u2018three whales\u2019 of legal defense<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Ivan Pavlov explains that, until recently, when he and his associates stopped working in Russia, their approach to defending people charged with crimes against the state had rested, like the ancients\u2019 universe, on \u201cthree whales\u201d:<\/p>\n

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The first one was the law, that is, a thorough familiarity with judicial practice and comprehensive command of the legal defense instruments. But an attorney must defend his client not only by means supplied by the law, but also by all means that aren\u2019t illegal. One of those means is publicity.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This is a tactic of telling the public what goes on behind the closed doors of FSB-initiated trials. In Pavlov\u2019s experience, exposing the absurdities and violations involved in a political trial, and dispelling the \u201catmosphere of secrecy,\u201d was sometimes enough to change the outcome. Other times, the authorities would respond to criticism with a brazen \u201cmight is right\u201d argument. Admitting arbitrariness and even abuse of power, they would insist on prosecuting an unlawful case \u201cjust because they can.\u201d<\/p>\n

What sometimes came to the rescue in those instances was the third \u201cwhale,\u201d nicknamed \u201cIrony.\u201d On occasion, putting the authorities on the spot (and showing that \u201cthe emperor has no clothes\u201d) resulted in a cardinal change of outcome.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a case study from Pavlov\u2019s defense practice. In April 2008, several women living in Sochi saw a cargo train loaded with military equipment passing through town. The women who spotted the train text-messaged their acquaintances about what they saw. Six years later, in 2014, all of them were arrested, charged with treason, and sentenced to 14 years in prison for divulging state secrets.<\/p>\n

The one thing that helped save Pavlov\u2019s client was, paradoxically, the draconian absurdity of her sentence. The facts of the case \u2014 that several housewives all saw something that was happening in plain view and sent a text of 70 characters or less about what they saw \u2014 made clear that the defendants could not have possibly \u201cdivulged\u201d anything of importance to the state.<\/p>\n

The legal team\u2019s publicity efforts got the media to talk about the case. What made the real difference, though, was Vladimir Putin\u2019s 2016 year-end press conference. Footage of the press conference shows that Putin could not have been more on the spot, down to the huge screens that magnified his every facial expression as he took questions from the journalists. When asked about the Sochi case, Putin shrugged and said that it didn\u2019t make sense. If a woman saw something that anyone else could see, it couldn\u2019t have been a state secret. \u201cTo be honest, I don\u2019t quite understand,\u201d he said, adding, \u201cI\u2019ll try to look into this.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Introducing \u2018Department One\u2019 Exiled human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov launches new legal group to take on Russia\u2019s treason and espionage cases<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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Introducing \u2018Department One\u2019 Exiled human rights lawyer Ivan Pavlov launches new legal group to take on Russia\u2019s treason and espionage cases<\/span><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n

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As he followed the press conference, Pavlov realized that the verdict was going to be reversed.<\/p>\n

Two days later, he received a telegram from the Supreme Court. His client was being summoned back to Moscow from a penitentiary in Ivanovo. But when she arrived back in Lefortovo, the FSB prison refused to let the legal team see her.<\/p>\n

When they finally met in court, a month later, it turned out that the prison officials had pressured Pavlov\u2019s client into appealing to the president for clemency. Without waiting for the trial to conclude, Putin pardoned her, preventing the defendant\u2019s formal acquittal. Instead of the justice that was due to her, she only got to go home free, like a bona fide criminal pardoned by the magnanimous head of state. This was galling.<\/p>\n

As if to turn the tables on his interviewer, Ivan Pavlov asks him: \u201cWhat do you think matters more to an attorney, especially today? What do you think a lawyer should care about? Is it justice? Or is it that his client should go home free?\u201d<\/p>\n

Without waiting for an answer, he goes on:<\/p>\n

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Of course, justice is important. But some things are even more important than this Russian justice, as we have it today. (Some would say that we don\u2019t have it, that it\u2019s a fiction\u2026) A person\u2019s freedom is more important than Russian justice.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\u2018One claw in the tar\u2019<\/strong><\/h3>\n

When all else fails, as seemingly it did when Pavlov\u2019s client Ivan Safronov was sentenced to 22 years on treason charges, what remains is time. Pavlov is convinced that Safronov will be released much sooner than in 22 years, simply because Putin and his \u201cjunta,\u201d as Pavlov calls it, are not immortal.<\/p>\n

\u201cIvan is, of course, a singular person,\u201d Pavlov says. The entire case, according to the attorney, was empty: even the investigator knew full well that Safronov had not committed any \u201ctreason.\u201d What the prosecution wanted, though, was access to the journalist\u2019s sources, whose confidentiality Safronov was determined to protect to the end.<\/p>\n

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