The chairman of Russia's Supreme Court said in April that too many defendants are being acquitted under the jury trial system being phased in nationwide. Vyacheslav Lebedev said the acquittal rate in jury trials was 18%, against 3% in ordinary courts in 2005, adding that higher courts overturned 43% of the acquittals.
Speaker Boris Gryzlov said at a meeting with St. Petersburg's governor, Valentina Matviyenko, that "law enforcement agencies, and first of all prosecutors, should draw conclusions from the situation."
In May, the Supreme Court overturned a jury's non-guilty verdict on two servicemen suspected of killing civilians in troubled Chechnya.
Conversely, the court rejected an appeal by prosecutors and the parents of a nine-year-old Tajik girl killed in 2004 against the acquittal of a teenaged defendant charged in the attack.
Khursheda Sultonova died of stab wounds in St. Petersburg in February 2004 after being attacked along with her father and 11-year-old cousin by a group of young men. Her parents appealed a jury decision clearing the main defendant of murder on March 30. He was convicted of robbery and hooliganism. The St. Petersburg court sentenced seven defendants - six others were found guilty of hooliganism and another was cleared of all charges - to between one and a half to five and a half years in prison.
