By JIM HEINTZ
KHIMKI, Russia (AP) — American basketball star Brittney Griner was again in court docket on Tuesday for her trial for hashish possession amid U.S. diplomatic efforts to safe her launch.
During the listening to, prosecutors known as a state narcotics skilled who analyzed hashish present in Griner’s baggage. Her protection fielded a specialist who challenged the evaluation, charging that it was flawed and didn’t conform to official guidelines.
Griner was escorted into court docket in handcuffs and positioned inside a cage within the trial in Khimki, a city on the northern fringe of Moscow. While within the cage she held up private photographs.
The trial adjourned till Thursday, when closing statements are scheduled.
If convicted, the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) star and two-time Olympic gold medalist might face 10 years in jail. As her trial has progressed, the Biden administration has confronted rising public stress to get her launched.
In a rare transfer, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken final week spoke to his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, urging him to just accept a deal beneath which Griner and Paul Whelan, an American imprisoned in Russia on an espionage conviction, would go free.
The Lavrov-Blinken name marked the highest-level identified contact between Washington and Moscow since Russia despatched troops into Ukraine greater than 5 months in the past, the direct outreach at odds with U.S. efforts to isolate the Kremlin.
People acquainted with the proposal say it envisions buying and selling Griner and Whelan for the infamous arms dealer Viktor Bout. It underlines the general public stress that the White House has confronted to get Griner launched.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre informed reporters Monday that Russia has made a “bad faith” response to the U.S. authorities’s provide, a counteroffer that American officers don’t regard as critical. She declined to elaborate.
Griner has acknowledged there have been vape canisters containing hashish oil in her baggage when she was arrested at a Moscow airport in February. But she insisted that she had no felony intent and that the canisters ended up in her baggage as a result of she was packing rapidly. Griner performed for a Russian girls’s basketball group within the WNBA low season.
To bolster her case, her protection legal professionals have offered testimony from docs that she was prescribed hashish as a therapy for ache. Medical marijuana therapy isn’t authorized in Russia.
“There are a lot of factors that will taken by the court into account,” Griner’s legal professional Maria Blagovolina informed reporters after Tuesday’s listening to, including that Griner “admitted that she did bring something, but we need to know what she did bring.”
While judges have leeway to contemplate mitigating elements beneath Russian regulation, acquittals are uncommon and account for lower than 1% of circumstances in Russian felony prosecutions.
A conviction, nonetheless, might doubtlessly pave the best way for Griner’s alternate as Russian officers mentioned it might solely occur after the judicial course of is accomplished.
Tom Firestone, a Washington legal professional who previously served as authorized adviser on the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, mentioned Griner might be handed a troublesome sentence as a approach for Russians “to maximize their leverage in negotiations.” He informed The Associated Press that Russia “may want to let this play out a little bit longer and try to extract more concessions.”
Russian officers have scoffed at U.S. statements concerning the case, saying they present a disrespect for Russian regulation. They remained poker-faced, urging Washington to debate the problem via “quiet diplomacy without releases of speculative information.”
Asked concerning the newest White House remark relating to the Russian counteroffer, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov wouldn’t provide any particulars.
“Any exchange of information on the subject should be discreet without any ‘loudspeaker diplomacy,’” he informed reporters. “Public exchange of positions will not yield any result.”
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Eric Tucker in Washington and Vladimir Isachenkov in Moscow contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”