Приговор при свечах / Judgment in candlelight - Владимир Анатольевич Арсентьев

from one village to another. After their trip together down the chocolate lane, the humble man boasted that he and his brother helped arrest a serial killer while they were on business in the provincial capital. The killer was convicted and executed by firing squad, and the head of the provincial police rewarded the brothers with a watch. They wore that etched military watch in turns.

Then followed a bumpy tractor ride on the road shoulder. The investigator jumped up and down in the cabin of a large single-seated Belarusian tractor, on top of its big right rear wheel. The driver told him about the circumstances of the case in question, revealing new details of the chocolate saga. Next day, the deputy chief of operational affairs of the district police department was very happy to receive statistical cards from the investigator accounting for the solved case.

The village school teacher knew the whereabouts of all witnesses, who were elusive even for the neighborhood police inspector. So the investigator managed to interview everyone in a single quiet evening. One of the three villages the investigator visited turned out to be a national “enclave.” The villagers poorly understood the official language of the country. The motorcyclist teacher had to involve himself in the interviews as an interpreter. Suddenly, an old woman showed them a piece of chocolate, which convinced the investigator that the crime was solved.

After his enlightening trip to the village of dark chocolate lovers, the investigator discovered a secret trap door, through which tens of kilos of chocolate kept mysteriously disappearing every night shift. The chocolate found its way to the outside of the factory, where it was picked up by an informed person. That person managed to remain behind the scenes – no one is a thief in fact if not caught in the act, as they say. Still, the investigator managed to stem the illegal chocolate flow.

By the way, the man originally charged with stealing chocolate was held in detention throughout the process and had nothing to do with the continued theft of socialist property. Despite his indisputable alibi, the factory – the aggrieved party – suggested that their imprisoned former employee should be demanded by the law enforcement to compensate for the shortfall. In this way, his offense was about to become more serious, leading up to capital punishment. Firing squad executions then took place in the central prison known as White Swan, where the accused man was held together with others like him. Several hundreds were executed every year, and every night he could hear the chilling screams of death row prisoners through the thick walls. Of course, the executed people didn’t grow up on the moon. They represented countless poisonous wrongs of the society and suffered from the same society’s horrible reprisal.

The investigator made sure that the amount of socialist property stolen by the accused was established in a fair, non-arbitrary manner. This gave the court the legitimate opportunity to rule out imprisonment and mete out a less severe punishment. What’s more, even though the defendant had a prior criminal record, he repented, seeing the obvious fairness of the trial. The investigator’s reasonable approach demonstrated his legal consciousness, without which the presumption of innocence is no more than an empty declaration.

Meanwhile, the demoted captain-lieutenant of the Northern Fleet of the Soviet Union was arrested and sentenced to more time for escaping.

The aggregate practical knowledge and skills to prove someone’s guilt of an offense, find out their mens rea, motives, and subjective elements of the crime is known as investigative experience. It can never be acquired without internal struggle and overcoming external obstacles. Besides, the investigator’s experience defines the level and quality of criminal investigation methods used to solve the case. These methods directly influence the examination of evidence at trial, and they determine the organization and flow of criminal proceedings. My personal investigative and then judicial practice was shaped by the personal element of freedom and the moral element of conscience.

Freedom is the essence of a personality shaped by rejection of evil. Freedom is primarily understood as an individual’s capacity to be responsible for one’s actions or inaction, i. e. personal and social responsibility. Only then does one acquire the right to, and opportunity for, exercising the basic principles. In this way an investigator creates the basis for a fair criminal trial resulting in a lawful and reasonable judgment. Only potential specialists like these are to deliver criminal justice in Russia, because “not everyone is capable of taking up a sword, fighting with it, and morally living up to the challenge. It takes not the worst people but the best, people who combine honor and strength; for the weak ones cannot bear this burden, and the evil ones will betray the very purpose of the sword…”[199]

3.5. The Slinger

The preliminary investigation of the criminal case against foreman Lapenko and slinger Khrapov lasted 365 days. When the district prosecutor was finally drawing up the indictment, he called the investigator into his office and asked,

– What are Lapenko and Khrapov guilty of?

– Death of a person.

– They can only be guilty if there is a proven causal relationship between the death on the construction site and the acts they committed in violation of their duties and applicable construction procedures.

–..?

– If the court returns the case, we will drop it. – With those words, the prosecutor put his seal of approval on the indictment in advance and referred the case to the people’s court.

Following the prosecutor, Khrapov’s counsel Meyerson idiomatically summarized the results of the preliminary investigation: the slinger is always the guilty party on the construction site, just as a switch tender is on the railroad!

Although the supervising prosecutor found the accusation factually vague, the people’s court proceeded to hear the criminal case.

It is stated in the judgment[200] that the people’s court heard the defendants and witnesses,