The Supreme Court had ruled on March 29 to annul a not-guilty verdict for four doctors involved in the trial, and sent the case back for retrial to Moscow City Court.
Doctors Irina Lirtsman and Lyubov Pravdenko of Hospital No. 20, and Bairma Shagdurova and Pyotr Pyatnichuk of the Moscow Organ Donation Coordination Center, had been cleared in a retrial on November 4, 2005 of charges of trying to remove a kidney from the victim of a car accident while he was still alive.
Moscow City Court exonerated the doctors, saying there was not enough evidence to prove they had committed the premeditated murder of Anatoly Orekhov. The court said Orekhov, 50, had died of severe brain injuries sustained in a car crash, and that the attempted kidney removal followed his death.
Prosecutors, however, said Orekhov was still alive and still had a pulse when police arrived at the hospital and saw the doctors preparing to carry out the transplant.
All defendants pleaded not guilty. Pravdenko said during the trial, "I was not doing anything illegal, I was just trying to save the man's life."
The Supreme Court's collegiate on criminal cases will have to review the prosecutors' demand to quash the acquittal for the second time.
