Jurors in the case of Kaliningrad doctors told about the pressure of the judge

Four jurors in the case of Kaliningrad doctors Elina Sushkevich and Elena Bela, convicted in the case of the death of a baby in a maternity hospital, reported pressure from the judge. “Medvestnyk” writes about this with reference to Sushkevich’s lawyer Kamil Babasov.

According to him, judge Andrey Vyunov entered the jurors’ break room and convinced them of the guilt of the defendants. One of the jurors was detained by the police on the day of the session and released only for lunch, so he could not come to court. According to Babasov, the juror was detained “under a contrived pretext.”

The jurors told about the pressure during the court appeal against the sentence. “We believe that the court thought about it, heard the revelations of the jurors about the pressure on them, and will consider these arguments to be weighty,” Babasov said.

The review of the appeal will continue on April 26. At the meeting, the last word of the convicted will be heard and the decision will be announced. The defense hopes that the sentence of Sushkevich and Beloy will be overturned.

• In September 2022, the Moscow Regional Court sentenced Elina Sushkevich and Elena Beluya to 9 and 9.5 years in prison in the case of the death of an infant. The jury found the doctors guilty of the murder of the premature baby by five votes against three. During the trial, the prosecutor asked for 13 years in prison for them. In the last word, both Sushkevich and Belaya declared that they considered themselves innocent. Their defense insisted that the jurors were under pressure. The National Medical Chamber called the verdict of the Mosoblsud illegitimate.
• Sushkevich and Beluya were accused of murdering a premature baby boy in maternity hospital No. 4 in Kaliningrad in November 2018. Zamirakhon Akhmedova from Uzbekistan gave birth to a son on the 24th week of pregnancy, weighing only 700 grams. A team of the regional Perinatal Center led by Elina Sushkevich, an intensivist-anesthesiologist, was called to help the baby a few hours after his birth. The doctor performed resuscitation measures on the child, but he died. According to the investigation, the cause of the child’s death was magnesium poisoning. Allegedly, Sushkevich injected the child with a fatal dose of magnesium on the instructions of the head physician of the maternity hospital, as the doctors did not want to spoil the statistics of the maternity hospital.
• In December 2020, the jury of the Kaliningrad Regional Court acquitted Sushkevich and Beluya. But at the request of the Prosecutor General’s Office, the sentence was overturned, and the case was transferred to Moscow.