The defense also tried to undermine the prosecution case. On Tuesday, at the seventh hearing in her case, a defense expert testified that the examination of the substance contained in Griner’s vape cartridges did not comply with Russian law.
“The examination does not comply with the law in terms of the completeness of the study and does not comply with the norms of the Code of Criminal Procedure,” said forensic chemist Dmitry Gladyshev during an approximately two-hour meeting.
Maria Blagovolina, a partner at the Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin & Partners law firm and a member of Griner’s defense team, told CNN that her team’s experts identified “several defects” in the machines used to measure the substance.
At the trial, Griner testified that she had a doctor’s prescription for medical marijuana and had no intention of bringing the drug into Russia. After her arrest in February, she was tested for drugs and found to be clean, according to her lawyers.
“She is still focused and she is still nervous. And she still knows that the end is near, and of course she heard the news, so she hopes that someday she can return home, and we hope too, ”Blagovolina said on Tuesday. She added that the verdict in the case would be handed down “very soon”, possibly on Thursday.
How was the trial
In court on Tuesday, Griner sat in the defendant’s cage in the courtroom. Chargé d’Affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Elizabeth Rude, attended the hearing and subsequently stated that the U.S. “will continue to support Ms. Greener at every stage of this process and until she returns home to the United States.” safely”.
Griner’s lawyers have already laid out some of the arguments that the basketball player’s detention was mishandled after she was stopped by Sheremetyevo International Airport on February 17.
Her detention, search and arrest were “illegal,” one of her lawyers, Aleksandr Boikov, said last week, noting that more details would be revealed during the final debate.
There was no lawyer, Griner said, and she was not explained her rights. These rights will include access to a lawyer after she is detained and the right to know what she is suspected of. Under Russian law, she had to be informed of her rights within three hours of her arrest.
In her testimony, Griner “explained to the court that she knew and respected Russian laws and never intended to break them,” Blagovolina said after a hearing last week.
“We continue to insist that, through negligence, in a hurry, she packed her suitcase and did not pay attention to the fact that substances approved for use in the United States ended up in this suitcase and arrived in the Russian Federation,” Boikov said. This is reported by the Moscow Legal Center.
The trial took place against the backdrop of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s saber-rattling with the United States and Europe.
The Kremlin also warned on Tuesday that US “megaphone diplomacy” would not help negotiations on a prisoner exchange involving Griner. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow believes these talks should be “cautious”.
The Griner family, WNBA supporters and teammates continued to show solidarity and hope as they awaited the conclusion of the lawsuit. Her WNBA team, the Phoenix Mercury, is expected to play the Connecticut Sun on Thursday night at 7:00 pm ET.
CNN’s Elizabeth Wolf, Travis Caldwell, Dakin Andone, Kylie Atwood, Evan Perez, Jennifer Hansler, Natasha Bertrand, Frederick Pleitgen, Chris Liakos, and Zahra Ulla contributed to this report.
