The father, Dmytro Pavlychenko, and his son, Serhiy Pavlychenko, still could appeal the tragic ruling, but given Ukraine’s dismal acquittal rates that have averaged 0.23 percent in 2005-2012 (far lower than the average 10.5 percent acquittal rate in 1935-1945 during Stalin’s totalitarian rule, according to respected journalist Mustafa Nayem’s research), the odds for exoneration are severely against them. 

The initial Oct. 2, 2012 ruling sentenced Dmytro, who was in his late 40s at the time of Judge Serhiy Zubkov’s murder, to life in prison. His son, who was only 18, received 13 years. The authorities, including Anatoliy Mohyliov, the interior minister at the time, said the case was well-documented and well-investigated, and said the right people were convicted. 

But yesterday’s ruling came after new evidence was presented to the court and followed the disclosure in January of confidential case file materials by an alleged whistleblower from the prosecutor’s office that suggested the Pavlychenkos were not guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

I personally wrote about and examined the case file materials, and consulted with lawyers, including the defense team’s legal counsel, who unambiguously said the materials provided enough inconsistencies and contradictions with the official version of events that the criminal case would have been thrown out of any courtroom that makes decisions without “passion or prejudice.”

Not in Ukraine where the courts dish out justice as often as Haley’s Comet is visible to the naked eye from Earth. 

The whistleblower explained his reason for making the case materials available in a drop box in an e-mailed message to the Kyiv Post “on behalf of all prosecutors who still have a conscience left,” adding that he cannot “look at such a disgrace with what is being done in the name of the public prosecutor’s office in the courts anymore.”

The anonymous alleged prosecutor wrote that “when the (murder) case is thrown together so insolently and thoughtlessly, then it’s clear to even the inexperienced (law enforcer) that (the case) received approval from very high up.”

The official version of the 42-year-old judge’s murder says the motive was revenge. Zubkov had evicted the Pavlychenko family from their centrally located Kyiv home in a December 2010 ruling in favor of Gooioord BV, a Dutch property developer. 

Investigators said Dmytro, a small-scale businessman, recruited his son, a teenager and member of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer team fan club, to help carry out the murder. They said the father and son waited for the judge to return home on March 21 when they killed him in the elevator and left him on the landing near his apartment entrance. 

Three days later on March 24, police announced they had the suspects in custody in a display of swift investigative work. It appears they investigated the other property dispute cases over which the judge had presided, including those that ruled in the public’s, not the private developer’s, favor in just three days. 

Authorities said they placed the son, Serhiy, at the crime scene because he had left his blood-soaked gym shoes and jogging pants on the first floor of the residential building when fleeing. 

But the case file shows a picture of one of the gym shoes without blood, and whose sole print doesn’t match the one found at the crime scene on the 7th floor where the judge was murdered. 

The leaked information also indicates that a police dog followed the sole print in the opposite direction that police say Serhiy had fled. The route the police dog took leads to a second sole print, identical to the one on the 7th floor murder scene, which doesn’t match the found gym shoe. 

Authorities say Serhiy put the judge’s trousers and shoes on after the murder, even the though the judge had died of numerous knife and gunshot wounds, suggesting his clothes also had blood on them. 

In court appearances, Serhiy said the murder confession he initially gave was given under extreme duress. Authorities refuted this in court despite documented cases of police torture by human rights groups. 

The leaked information also contains material that authorities believed there was a third person at the crime scene, but which was omitted in their official version. 

Also, authorities say they found a wheelchair on the first floor of the residential building where Zubkov lived that was left there by Dmytro after the murder – apparently he used the wheelchair to enter the building disguised. They say Dmytro’s fingerprints matched those found on the wheelchair. 

Yet, according to the case file, authorities first found four usable fingerprints on the wheelchair. But when Dmytro was detained on March 24, investigators ordered a repeat forensic study of the wheelchair. 

This time, they sent fingerprint markings on adhesive tape for analysis, not the actual wheelchair, suggesting the prints could have been retrieved anywhere. Moreover, authorities sent five fingerprints for a repeat analysis while only four usable prints were found on the wheelchair. 

I would like to ask the presiding judge of Aug. 1 Viacheslav Dziubyn: “how do four finger usable prints produce five? The same way that 2+2=5 in George Orwell’s 1984?”

Mark Rachkevych is a Kyiv Post editor.