Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

bed in her room. He hit her multiple times on her head and chest, killing her immediately. Her death was caused by an open blunt injury, more specifically, a depressed skull fracture. Kochetov also inflicted multiple bilateral fractures of the ribs, fracture of the sternum, and bilateral mandible fracture in Dneprova. After that, Kochetov took Dneprova’s body to the courtyard, put it between the fence and the shed, and covered it with snow.

After several days, Kochetov, concealing the body, took it to the utility room of the house. He partially dismembered the corpse with the axe and put the body parts in a sack, adding two bricks for weight. Using a sled, he got the sack full of Dneprova’s body parts to the river, where he dumped it into a manhole.

The court qualified Kochetov’s act as intentional homicide committed for gain by a person who had committed intentional homicide before.

The forensic psychiatric examination found that Kochetov had no history of mental illness. However, he had a psychopathic personality of the irritable type.

The court sentenced Kochetov to long-term imprisonment in a high security penal colony.[183]

The convicted man did not consider himself guilty or agree with the court judgment. Kochetov and his counsel, lawyer Yu., pleaded not guilty and appealed citing that while there was no sufficient evidence, the court had to seek out proof to base the verdict upon.

However, the Judicial Board on Criminal Cases of the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation left Kochetov’s sentence unchanged and dismissed the cassation appeals filed by Kochetov and lawyer Yu.[184]

As the judgment of guilty entered into legal force, the prosecutor who had been filing protests before and was happy with how everything turned out, victoriously attributed the judge’s good faith efforts to the penal bodies. He had no scruples about taking credit for someone else’s work, thereby disparaging justice delivered by the court.

When someone is stuck for a long time in a situation too familiar, they become competent – but backward. Their thinking degrades, because they don’t deal with any new problems. Habitual tasks are not solved but pipelined, and thinking is economized upon. Entrenched in their own conservatism, such a person then starts avoiding new challenges.[185]

3.2. The Forensics

Right before considering Kochetov’s case, the judge worked on a criminal case against Klimov and Mityukov who were charged with murdering Mangalov. The challenge was to organize a search for eleven people who, according to the investigation, were at the murder scene – and ensure their presence at the trial. Klimov insisted that the blood stains found on his shirt were not victim Mangalov’s blood but Krotov’s, whose nose he had damaged in a fight on the previous day. Indeed, the uncatchable Krotov’s blood type matched the one found on Klimov’s shirt. To properly verify that assumption, the court needed Krotov personally. However, that man was no witness in the case, so the case file contained no information about him. The state prosecuting attorney, believing that Krotov’s questioning could potentially compromise the prosecution, took no action to solve that problem. As Klimov denied his involvement in the murder of Mangalov, the defense provided Krotov’s blood certificate to corroborate Klimov’s innocence.

But finding Krotov was only half of it. After establishing his identity, one had to get his official consent for the blood test, then have the samples, including the one from Mangalov’s corpse, examined and compared to the blood stains on Klimov’s shirt. Such forensic examination required evidentiary items and Krotov in person. Those precise obstacles hampered the proceedings and kept them on the docket of various officials for more than a year. What was one supposed to do?

During the criminal trial in an unfamiliar city of 60,000, the judge found Krotov and ensured that he came to court.

Krotov confirmed Klimov’s story at trial, and the court ordered a forensic medical test of the evidence including Klimov’s shirt. What next?

Next, the judge took Krotov by train to the provincial bureau of forensics, where an expert took Krotov’s blood sample for examination.

After acquiring Krotov’s and Mangalov’s blood samples and Klimov’s shirt, the experts conducted a forensic examination and found that Mangalov and Krotov had the same blood type. However, differentiation showed that their MNS antigen systems differed – Mangalov’s blood was of the MN type, and Krotov’s of the M type. The blood on Klimov’s shirt had MN antigens in it and therefore couldn’t be Krotov’s.

Having collected and examined the evidence, the court found the following facts. In the evening, Klimov, unstable due to his repeat brain injuries, and psychopath Mityukov physically assaulted Mangalov and killed him out of personal hostility. The reason was that Mangalov had forcibly acquired Mityukov’s shoes and gold ring on the previous day.

Klimov and Mityukov were going to their holiday destination in the woods. Klimov was driving his GAZ-52 truck with his friends and relatives on board, eleven passengers in total. They met Mangalov and Shapkin on their way and took them on board, punching Mangalov in the face several times.

When they came to their destination, Klimov and Mityukov pulled Mangalov aside and demanded him to give back the ring. They punched him in the face and beat him with a birch rod that broke in the process.

Mangalov fought for his life and showed active resistance. So Klimov, intending to kill Mangalov, took a wide swing and struck him on the head with the butt of an axe, whereupon the victim fell unconscious.

After some time, Mangalov came to, but Mityukov threw him in a trash pit away from the camping spot with the purpose of killing him. Klimov, with the same purpose, strangled Mangalov’s neck with a noose made of rubber cable insulation.

Then Klimov and Mityukov dumped Mangalov in the truck bed and drove him to the lake. Together they took Mangalov under the arms and threw him in the water