Word: kaminskaya
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...Kaminskaya's most significant criminal case is both a lesson in unfamiliar Soviet legal procedure and a riveting mystery thriller. In 1967 the parents of a 16-year-old boy, Sasha, engaged her to represent him in a sensational case. Sasha and his pal Alik had been charged with the rape and murder of their classmate Marina in a village outside Moscow. During six months of pretrial detention the boys had confessed, then recanted. The prosecution's star witness was an old woman who claimed to have heard Marina cry out as the three youngsters passed under...
...Kaminskaya's first meeting with Sasha convinced her that he and Alik were innocent. She quickly discovered the reasons they had confessed. Among them: Sasha had been put into a cell with a horribly scarred adult inmate who told him that if he did not confess he would be sent to a notorious prison where guards and convicts alike would beat him up. Alik had been given a similar cell mate...
...Kaminskaya found that in addition the investigator had fabricated evidence. Visiting the scene of the crime, she discovered that the boys could not have attacked Marina where the investigator said they did. The site, near a pond, had been awash in mud on the day of the murder, but the boys had been seen clean and dry shortly after they had allegedly committed the crime...
During the boys' six-week trial, Kaminskaya's new evidence impressed the court, which referred the case for further investigation. Still, the court at the second trial pronounced Sasha and Alik guilty (there are no juries in the Soviet Union). Undeterred, Kaminskaya and Alik's advocate both appealed; once again the case was referred for investigation. A third trial ensued, this time before the Supreme Court of the Russian Republic. The evidence that the boys were innocent was overwhelming. Among other things, the defense established that the old woman who claimed to have heard Marina...
Sitting in the living room of her modest two-story house in Arlington, Kaminskaya widens her piercing blue eyes at the memory of her victory in the courtroom 14 years ago. The 63-year-old advocate brought to America a treasured photo of Sasha, grown up, that is touchingly inscribed to her. But she has other, tragic memories of the dissidents she could not save from injustice: Yuri Galanskov, who died of mistreatment in the Gulag; Ilya Gabay, who killed himself in despair; Anatoli Marchenko, who was sent back to the camps for ten years after three terms of imprisonment...