This day occupies pages 142 through 169 of Volume II of the
transcript.
Here begins the testimony on the ritual murder charge. The setup that comes out over the next three
days is this. After the first autopsy on
22 March, the government sent Kosorotov to Kiev. Kosorotov had a new autopsy report written on
26 March. Ostensibly Tufanov was
involved in the autopsy, but eventually he will admit that he didn’t look at
the body. Dr. Obolonsky, who died in
1912, was the other prosector on 26 March, but his individual report has
significant errors. Kosorotov finally
admits that he was there, and that what is in the report reflects what the
handbook of forensic medicine authorizes prosectors to say when they testify in
court. Kosorotov believes that this
authority supersedes the need to actually eyeball the body being
autopsied. I’m not a prosector so I
don’t know what the rules in America are, but as far as I can make out from
what he’s saying – while he happens to be in a state that apparently is near
hysteria – that is what he means.
Gruzenberg immediately notices a problem with the photograph
of the corpse. The date is 23 March, but
the autopsy report from the day before that says the top of the skull was
removed and sent for examination. The
photo shows a whole skull. The answer
is, first, that some other corpse’s skull top was substituted for purposes of
the funeral. The second answer is that
the photos weren’t taken by a forensic photographer; they were taken by Dr.
Tufanov, the prosecutor, as a private individual.
The problem is that at the time he took the pictures,
Tufanov had not been assigned to the second autopsy team. What’s more, the forensic investigator was
not present when the pictures were taken, and neither were any witnesses. Finally, the photos were not submitted to the
forensic investigator for examination and they were not attached to the case as
being relevant, nor do the files contain a record of their examination. Under these conditions the photos should
have been rejected as inadmissible evidence.
Notice that the second autopsy in some places uses metric
measurements and in others uses something called poperechny palets, a
phrase I can’t find anywhere. Maybe it
means a finger’s width. That’s extremely
imprecise and should never be used in a scientific investigation. Russia didn’t formally adopt the metric system
until 1924, but obviously medical personnel used it. The first autopsy does.
Notice that both autopsies find over 40 injuries and neither
one identifies which of them are copies of the stigmata; in particular, the
hands and feet were not injured at all.
If Archimandrite Ambrosius was right, this was not a ritual murder. Notice the statement about 13 injuries to the
right temple (statement 303). This
contradicts Pranaitis’ later statement that the wounds have to be in the neck,
and if Pranaitis is right, this is not ritual murder. Furthermore, Gruzenberg will point out later
that there are actually 14 wounds in the neck.
Also notice that the examination of the internal organs
signed by Obolonsky and Tufanov is an exact copy, except for one numeral, of
the report signed by Karpinsky.
Dr. Pavlov, with 47 years of surgery and teaching behind
him, makes a reasonable request based on his experience. Doctors always compare the positive print
with the negative. Prints may include a
smaller area and miss what’s on the edges of the negative; they are prone to
mistakes of printing including dust and weak chemicals, as well as flaws in the
paper. So Dr. Pavlov asks that they be allowed to see
the negatives the way they do in practice, even with X-rays. "Then this would be complete expertise,”
he says. But he doesn’t realize that the
court doesn’t want real expertise, it just wants a rubber stamp of what it
plans to present as proven. So the
request is denied.
Vipper’s first tactic today is to pretend that the experts
have provided exhaustive conclusions and therefore few questions will be
needed. However, the only conclusions
provided to date went to the forensic investigator, Mashkevich, more than a
year ago. The experts did not have
before them the actual photos and specimens, as will be shown when the judge
tells the medical personnel to start studying them as a basis for their
remarks. The result of Vipper’s tactic
would be to hold to year-old conclusions that have nothing to do with the information
generated during the “witness to fact” phase of the trial. Thus the conclusions can be – and will prove
to be – false because they are ill-informed.
The defense, once again, is actually trying this case
instead of just standing there for window-dressing, and they intend to treat
all experts alike. This will turn out to
be devastating for the prosecution because the judge will refuse to let the
attorneys argue against the information presented. Boldyrev only lets them ask the experts to
clarify. The only true opposition to one
“expert” witness is the statement of another “expert” witness. The attorneys will have to try to get the
experts to talk down for the muzhiks on the jury who at best have sixth
grade educations, not tell the experts that they have misstated something. So the prosecution cannot argue with the
experts they believe favor the defense, and they will be caught in the trap
they think they have set to ruin the defense case.
Archimandrite Ambrosius’ deposition opens with the fact that
he is reporting, not eyewitness accounts, but anecdotal evidence which was
taught to two Jewish cantonists after their conversion to Orthodoxy. Of course, the Jews would not teach such
things. Journalist Vladimir
Bonch-Bruevich, in his 1919 book, claims that the Orthodox church did not teach
about ritual murder, but these two cantonists could have obtained the
information no other way and throughout the trial, Russian Orthodox priests
preached against Beilis, according to the American Jewish Yearbook.
Notice that the court waited from March to November to take
samples of wallpaper from Cheberyak’s apartment. In the meantime, she had washed the carpet;
are you telling me she didn’t also wash the walls in the 4 ½ months before she
was evicted? And then did the apartment
stay empty for three more months, losing money for Zakharchenko the whole
time? I believe on day 17, Balavin said
a Loshkarev moved in and I believe his description suits the idea that he took
the Cheberyaks’ place. At any rate, I
don’t believe that the apartment walls remained uncleaned the whole time. Or that damp and other effects wouldn’t make
the marks fade. Spectrographic analysis
of blood goes back at least to 1892, according to my research, but the test
description is general. Given other
results later on this day, we cannot be sure all possible tests or even those
most likely to produce results were run.
Judge: Fyodor Boldyrev
Prosecution:
Criminal
Prosecutor, Oscar Vipper
Civil
Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
Private
Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov
Defense:
Oscar
Gruzenberg
Nikolay Karabchevsky
Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
Alexandr Zarudny
Vasily Maklakov
Page
|
||||
Witness
|
Notes
|
Transcript
|
Translation
|
Statement
|
Archimandrite Ambrosius
|
Testified by deposition
|
144
|
1856
|
13
|
Zhenya Cheberyak
|
Autopsy report
|
145
|
1858
|
35
|
Tarnovsky
|
Zhenya’s doctor
Testified by deposition
|
146
|
1860
|
48
|
Nikolay Aleksandrovich Krasovsky
|
Scolded about rumors of poison he helped spread
|
147
|
1862
|
61
|
Karpinsky
|
Andrey’s first autopsy
|
151
|
1870
|
220
|
Obolonsky/Tufanov
|
Andrey’s second autopsy
|
153
|
1875
|
255
|
Tufanov
|
Photographs discussed
Vera’s carpet record of examination
|
160
168
|
1888
1905
|
319
478
|
Second parts report
|
Identical to first
|
163
|
1894
|
408
|
© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights
Reserved
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