Posts Tagged ‘david crane’
Prosecuting the Dead: Part III
Recently I have written two items for JURIST related to the case of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian lawyer who was tortured to death in prison between 2008 and 2009 for revealing a $250 million tax fraud scheme perpetrated by the Russian government in 2005. His death has triggered worldwide condemnation and censure by various governments along with the European Parliament. Even the US Congress has taken up the banner of condemnation by introducing the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, a bi-partisan effort that looks for passage this year, hopefully prior to the general election in November.
My first comment addressed the Russian government’s plans to prosecute Magnitsky on trumped-up charges even though he is dead. They are prosecuting a dead man. Though not unprecedented over the past 1000 years, it is simply not done in modern criminal practice. My second comment dealt with the “acquittal” of one of the doctors who was complicit in the torture.
The regime of Vladimir Putin, so concerned about the actions by the US Congress (and the rest of the world) seeking justice for Sergei Magnitsky, has made it one of its top foreign policy objectives to quash this international protest, including the legislation pending in Congress. The recent debacle of a Russian Federation legislator coming to the US to “lobby” Congress against adopting the Magnitsky Act underscores the desperation of Putin and his henchmen. (As an aside, the legislator is barred from entering Canada due to his association with the Russian Mafia.)
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Prosecuting the Dead: Part II
JURIST Contributing Editor David Crane of Syracuse University College of Law says the enactment of the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act will be an important practical and symbolic act showing that the US government acknowledges the long slide of the Russian people back into anarchy and lawlessness…
Russia has attempted to cover up, gloss over and sweep under the rug the fact that they seized a young Russian lawyer named Sergei Magnitsky off the street, tortured him in a year-long detention without a hearing or trial and allowed him to languish and die in prison, all for calling the Russian government out on a vast tax fraud scheme in the amount of over $250 million.
Over these past few years, the Russian government has gone after Magnitsky’s former employer, Hermitage Fund, his boss, William Browder and even his mother in attempts to bring silence to a growing call for justice by the international community. Futile gestures and “investigations” have led to no real findings of fact nor an open hearing on those facts to determine accountability. Time and time again they have concluded no real harm and have tried to drop the case.
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Prosecuting the Dead
In 897 AD in what was called “the Cadaver Synod”, Pope Formosus was tried for various violations of Church laws. He was found guilty, his edicts were annulled, his robes were taken from him, and three fingers on his right hand were severed, before the former Pope was thrown in the Tiber River. Bizarrely, Pope Formosus had died of natural causes several months earlier. They prosecuted a dead man. Fast forward over a thousand years to 2012. Russia is about to put on trial a dead man, Sergei Magnitsky, a lawyer, who died in prison from the effects of his imprisonment and torture by the Russian Government in November 2009.
Magnitsky’s death has caused universal condemnation by world leaders, international organizations, such as the European Union, as well as human rights groups. His crime was exposing a massive tax fraud scheme by the Russian government and officials within the Medvedev/Putin regime in the amount of over $230 million dollars. Not content to leave Magnitsky in peace, the Russian government has hounded his family and harassed his mother, Natalia Magnitskaya. They are even going to bring charges in absentia against Magnitsky’s former employer, William Browder, a British citizen, of the Hermitage Capital Fund.
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