MOSCOW — Iosif L. Nagle was watching a final curtain at his small theater company when he saw two young men waiting for him in the audience. They didn’t look like patrons of the arts — something about their faces marked them as law enforcement — and Mr. Nagle bundled up and followed them out into the cold.
A few minutes later the three of them were talking over glasses of vodka. The subject was the jury that Mr. Nagle sat on, which, after four months of testimony, was leaning toward acquittal on some charges brought by the government.
The visitors, showing him cards that identified them as security officers, said it would be awful if such a bunch of criminals went unpunished. Would he consider, one of them said, withdrawing from the jury on the grounds of illness? Mr. Nagle said he had refused without a thought.
“I told them, ‘Why should I say I’m sick? You did your job badly, guys,’” said Mr. Nagle, 56. “‘Why did you bring an unsubstantiated case to court?’” Read the story here.
EXCLUSIVE
New York Times: In Russian justice, jury is something to work around
Juries were supposed to change Russia. Introduced amid a raft of liberal reforms in 1993, they shifted power away from the state structure and thrust it into the hands of citizens. Juries introduced real competition into Russia's courts, granting acquittals in 15 to 20 percent of cases, compared with less than 1 percent in cases decided by judges
