Kathrine Frich
These swift judgments almost always end badly for the accused.
Justice systems usually move at a glacial pace, bogged down in endless paperwork and scheduling conflicts.
But sometimes, the gears of the law suddenly start turning with frightening speed.
When that happens, you have to look closely at what is pushing the machine.
A sudden rush
That machinery is currently running hot across the Russian legal landscape. Meduza recently reported a sharp spike in convictions related to national security.
Courts there are now moving at a breakneck pace. They are pushing through complex cases that would normally take much longer to resolve.
Fresh numbers paint a stark picture of life inside the country today.
The human rights group First Department found that judges are now convicting two people of espionage every single working day.
Speeding through the docket
The first few months of this year show a massive shift in how these trials play out.
Prosecutors filed 143 state security cases between January and March. Judges cleared 62 of them by the end of that same quarter.
That clears nearly half the pile in record time. Things looked very different just a year ago, when only 32 out of 125 cases reached a conclusion.
March broke all recent records. Meduza noted that courts handed down 48 verdicts in that month alone, marking the highest rate seen during the entire observation period.
Years behind bars
These swift judgments almost always end badly for the accused.
The First Department found that nine out of ten defendants face charges of high treason. The punishment for falling afoul of that specific law is severe.
Those convicted receive an average sentence of just over 15 years in prison.
The sheer volume of incoming cases has fundamentally changed how the legal system operates on a daily basis.
One hearing only
Yevgeny Smirnov is a lawyer at the First Department. He explained the grim reality on the ground to Meduza.
“Military courts have become the busiest in Russia, and to cope with the influx of terrorism cases, they are forced to meticulously plan their work. In practice, this means that cases are scheduled months in advance, and each case is allocated a specific time period, often just one hearing,” Smirnov said.
A single short session in court is now all it takes to lose a decade and a half of freedom.
Sources: Meduza, First Department
