Advocates of Tikhonov and Khasis are sure that jurors passed their guilty verdict under pressure

The party of the defendants - Nikita Tikhonov and Eugenia Khasis - believes that the guilty verdict passed by the jury is illegal because of the violations admitted in the course of the trial on the murder case of lawyer Stanislav Markelov and journalist Anastasia Baburova.

The lawyer for the defence Gennady Nebritov believes that the jury disagreed on the issue of the defendants' guilt of the major incriminated crime, namely, the murder of lawyer Markelov. The jury voted seven votes for that Tikhonov and Khasis were guilty of murder, but 5 jurors found them "not guilty".

"The jury passed the verdict of guilty, but only one vote lacked to pass the acquittal; this indicates that the jury had serious disagreements. In the context of unlawful actions of jurors Nos. 1 and 4, we had earlier petitioned to challenge them, but our petitions were rejected. In actions of juror No. 1 there were violations of the Code of Criminal Procedure, namely, a direct prohibition to collect information outside the court session," said the representative of the defence.

"Moreover, the juror brought this information to the knowledge of other jurors. Information was gathered not only about the defendants, but also about their advocates; and this information was of expressed negative nature. Besides, there is data that the jurors were under great pressure in passing their verdict," said the lawyer.

In his turn, Roman Karpinskiy, who is representing the suffered party, believes that the split of jurors' votes means that the jury had a serious discussion; from here he concluded that the jury was not biased. 

"I know that media, in particular, the newspaper 'Moskovskiy Komsomolets', published an interview with juror Dobracheva. From the content of this article I conclude that the information which she announced was put into her mouth by the persons, who sympathize with the defendants, because she reported that Khasis' mother fell ill, and after the arrest of her daughter, she died, and that Khasis' father was in prison for committing economic crimes. How juror Dobracheva could know all this, it's a big question for me. I'm very sceptical about this juror's interview," Roman Karpinskiy commented the above circumstance.