Moscow Times

July 8, 2000

JUDGING THE COUNTRY'S 'ONE JUDGE'

By Sarah Karush

Staff Writer

Judge Sergei Pashin has given his colleagues plenty of reason to dislike him. So why exactly they're trying to kick him off the bench is subject to debate.

Some say it's because he's too liberal, allowing defendents to retract confessions given under torture and letting sick ones out of jail while they await trial. Others contend he's being punished for speaking out against the actions of prosecutors in the Media-MOST case. He himself says it's because he participated in a ground-breaking television show that lets convicted criminals plead their case before a jury.

The official reason? He criticized his colleagues.

The Moscow Qualification Collegium of Judges has taken up the case against Pashin, 37, because of a paper he wrote on the case of conscientious objector Dmitry Neverovsky. In his analysis, Pashin asserted that the court that convicted Neverovsky of draft-dodging and sentenced him to two years in jail violated the Constitution and criminal-procedural laws.

"They [those who filed the complaint] maintain that such activity is inconsistent with the status of a judge and that it diminishes the authority of the judiciary and sullies the honor and diginity of judges," Pashin said in a telephone interview Thursday.

Pashin and his allies maintain there is no rule that says he cannot give his opinions as an expert.

"He signed it as a scholar and not as a judge," said Mara Polyakova, chairwoman of the Independent Council of Legal Experts, which asked Pashin to write the paper on Neverovsky.

Polyakova said Pashin, who in the early 1990s headed the president's department on judicial reform, was being targeted for his views.

"He's a black sheep in the court, and they latch on to every little thing they can criticize him for. This isn't even a little thing f only the most ignorant person could come up with such a charge," she said.

When Pashin's department was disbanded because of opposition from the police and prosecutors, then-President Boris Yeltsin appointed him to the Moscow City Court. There he has earned a reputation for fairness among human rights organizations and defense attorneys. Unlike most of his colleagues, for instance, Pashin takes into consideration defendants' claims that signed confessions were given under torture.

"I like to joke that in Russia there is one judge. That's Pashin," said Rustem Maksudov, head of the Center for Legal and Judicial Reforms. "He is implementing judicial reform in one courtroom."

But Pashin does not hesitate to comment on what takes place in other courtrooms, such as the one in Obninsk, in the Kaluga region, where Neverovsky was convicted.

Neverovsky was found guilty of draft-dodging after he requested alternative civilian service, a right that is guaranteed by the Constitution but not implemented in practice. In February, the Kaluga Regional Court overturned the conviction but did not rule Neverovsky innocent, instead sending the case back to prosecutors for further investigation.

During Neverovsky's appeal to the Kaluga court, his mother and attorney, Tatyana Kotlyar, presented Pashin's analysis to the judge. Despite his own acknowledgement that the case against Neverovsky was flimsy, the judge was not pleased by Pashin's meddling.

"Let the qualification collegium take care of him," Kotlyar quoted him as saying.

Last week, prosecutors charged Neverovsky a second time, Kotlyar said. The charge is the same, but the wording of the allegations is slightly different.

"They corrected the mistakes that Pashin so kindly pointed out to them," Kotlyar said.

Pashin said the chairman of the Kaluga court filed the complaint immediately after Neverovsky's appeal, but the collegium only set it into motion this week. The collegium was scheduled to consider it Tuesday, but the hearing was postponed at the request of Pashin, who was deliberating a case and could not attend. It was unclear when the new hearing would take place.

Pashin said the move to oust him had been carefully timed to match the political mood in the country.

"They were waiting for the command," he said. "Now the attack on glasnost has begun."

Pashin said his main crime in the eyes of the judiciary was participating in "Sud Idyot," or "The Court Is in Session," a show on NTV in which juries consider real cases. The trials are conducted by the book and presided over by real judges but do not have legal force. In real life, the constitutional guarantee to a trial by jury is carried out in only nine of the country's 89 regions. Pashin presided over the show's March premiere.

Pashin said that other judges who have appeared on the show have received informal warnings from Supreme Court judges. He, on the other hand, has received no warning f only the qualification collegium's scrutiny.

"I'm incorrigible, so they don't even bother talking to me," he said.

Novaya Gazeta speculated in its Thursday issue that Pashin was being targeted because he publicly criticized the actions of the General Prosecutor's Office in relation to Media-MOST.

"I said the prosecutors acted crudely and in blatant contradiction of the existing legislation. This was not a political opinion but a professional one," Pashin said, but he added that he was not sure whether this played a role in the move to oust him.

The collegium previously suspended Pashin in 1998, but the Supreme Court reinstated him in the face of public outcry.

At that time, he was accused of violating a procedural norm that requires judges and "people's representatives" f two lay people who hear cases along with judges in non-jury trials f to deliberate in seclusion. The collegium held that Pashin broke this rule when, after deliberating a case with the people's representatives, he left town before he had finished writing up the verdict.

"This norm is an anchronism. Everybody violates it, but they file complaints only against those who are objectionable," said Vladimir Mironov, a former colleague of Pashin's who testified on his behalf during his Supreme Court appeal.

After Mironov testified for Pashin, he was also kicked off the bench. The official reason was his health: Mironov had been on sick leave, but on the day he was suspended he brought the collegium documents that stated he was well again, he said in a telephone interview this week.

Now his colleagues say they will only reinstate him if he goes through the accreditation process again, Mironov said.

A former civil judge who lacks Pashin's prominence, Mironov has not succeeded in getting the collegium's decisions overturned.

Pashin said his own prospects are not as bright this time either. In his view, the Supreme Court bended to public pressure in 1998 only because the court's chairman, Vyacheslav Lebedev, was nearing the end of his 10-year term. But last year Lebedev was reappointed and so has no reason to fear a public scandal, Pashin said.

"My hopes lie with the European Court of Human Rights and not with these gentlemen," he said.