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This is what happened in Aleksey Pichugin's case. During the first trial one of the witnesses, Korovnikov, who was serving life, let slip that he was a convicted prisoner. The jury regarded his testimony accordingly. At the new trial, before a different jury, his criminal record was carefully concealed. According to the defence team, Judge Olikhver "in contravention of Pichugin's right to defend himself" banned the jurors from asking "about the personalities of witnesses, which prevented them from properly evaluating the testimony."
11. An important role is played by a Supreme Court ruling banning jurors from being asked to consider the intent of witnesses with criminal records. Nor can they be asked if the defendant intended to take a life. It's also practically impossible to ask them to consider passion or diminished responsibility. They must not be asked to consider greed as a motive. Yet these are all circumstances relevant to a verdict, if only as mitigating factors during sentencing.
All these prohibitions are part of a consistent policy of the Supreme Court, which since 1995 has issued a number of rulings that increasingly limit jurors' rights. The court's pattern of thinking here is the same as the prosecution's. For example, it treats torture as merely a question of law and not of material fact, so it will only rule that the interrogation transcript is inadmissible.
This prosecutorial fear of the truth is understandable. When torture emerges, juries are inclined to acquit. As soon as the Supreme Court issued a landmark decision on torture in 1995 (in the case of a Mr Knyazev, who retracted in court testimony he had given during investigation), a large number of acquittals were overturned. Too much time had passed for it to be possible to prove torture, therefore it never occurred.
12. Another trick is to ask the jury as it retires to consider the charges not separately but in combination. At Sutyagin's trial, five were rolled into one - the jury had to give a single verdict covering all of them. In those circumstances, people usually think something like this: first offence guilty, second ditto, third no. So on balance - guilty.
Jurors can ask the judge to clarify the way the question is put to them, but the judge can refuse without giving reasons. If jurors were to say in open court that the question is posed in such a way that it can't be answered properly, then the judge would attempt to persuade them otherwise or would dismiss them. This has yet to happen: the overwhelming majority of our citizens still have faith in the authorities, including judges.
In the Ulman case the question filled a page and a half. How can one give a verdict on that? Sometimes the question is deliberately complicated. And sometimes it's phrased so that whichever answer the jury gives, the defendant is still found guilty.
In America, jurors answer a single question that is worded clearly and precisely: is the defendant guilty or not guilty of a specific offence. But in our country, judges can treat the question as a game of linguistics. Because the law makes no requirements as to clarity or content, our judges can confuse jurors with any manner of sophistry.
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