Brittney Griner Back in Russian Court as Lawyers Plead for Leniency

Escorted by a masked police officer with a canine, her wrists handcuffed, the American basketball star Brittney Griner appeared in a Russian court docket on Tuesday for an additional listening to in a trial that’s prone to finish along with her conviction in the midst of this month, her legal professionals mentioned.

Among the finest gamers of her era, Ms. Griner has been caught up in a confrontation between Russia and the US over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Because the case is heard in a courtroom, the wrangling over Ms. Griner’s destiny has shifted more and more to the diplomatic enviornment, with Russia and the US signaling her potential involvement in an alternate for high-profile Russians in U.S. custody.

Final week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken mentioned the American authorities had “put a considerable proposal on the desk,” though he declined to debate the main points. On Thursday, he mentioned the matter along with his Russian counterpart, Sergey V. Lavrov, of their first cellphone name because the struggle in Ukraine. However no breakthroughs have been reported, and no progress is anticipated earlier than Anna S. Sotnikova, a choose within the city of Khimki, close to Moscow, delivers a verdict within the case.

Ms. Griner, 31, was detained in a Moscow airport whereas touring to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to play for an area crew there about one week earlier than Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Customs officers discovered two vape cartridges containing lower than one gram of cannabis oil in her baggage.

Information of her detention was made public solely after the struggle began, nevertheless. She was charged with trying to smuggle a big quantity of unlawful narcotics into Russia, an offense that carries a sentence of as much as 10 years in jail.

Final month, Ms. Griner plead responsible to the costs, stressing that she had not meant to interrupt Russian regulation and that the unlawful substance had been in her baggage because of oversight whereas packing in a rush. In Russia, a responsible plea doesn’t finish a trial, and the proceedings are anticipated to proceed till mid-August, in keeping with her authorized crew.

On Tuesday, Ms. Griner’s legal professionals known as in an professional, who testified that the evaluation of vape cartridges carried out by the state didn’t meet Russian authorized necessities.

Thus, “it could be mistaken to determine the precise quantity” of the unlawful substance, mentioned Aleksandr Boikov, Ms. Griner’s lawyer. In response to the Russian felony code, the severity of punishment is determined by the quantity of narcotics found within the defendant’s possession, amongst different issues.

Ms. Griner’s authorized crew is making an attempt to influence the choose to melt the eventual sentence. They’d certainly one of Ms. Griner’s Russian teammates, Yevgeniya Belyakova, testify, together with the crew’s director and physician. Her authorized crew has additionally argued that she was licensed to make use of medicinal hashish in Arizona, the place she has performed for the Phoenix Mercury since 2013, to mitigate ache from accidents to her backbone, ankle and knees.

Throughout her personal testimony in court docket final week, Ms. Griner described how upon detention she had confronted a complicated and generally bewildering Russian authorized system. Her rights weren’t defined to her and a lawyer was offered solely 16 hours after her detention started, she mentioned. Ms. Griner additionally mentioned that she had been instructed to signal papers with no rationalization of what they implied and that an interpreter, offered by the regulation enforcement, had translated “virtually nothing.”

The listening to was adjourned till Thursday, when either side will current their closing arguments, mentioned Maria Blagovolina, a lawyer with the Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin and Companions agency, which can be representing Ms. Griner.