This day occupies pages 121 through 141 of Volume I of the transcript.
Today Defense Attorney Grigorevich-Barsky remarks that the
forensic investigator, when taking a deposition, has the authority to leave out
whatever he considers unimportant. Grigorevich-Barsky
considers it a normal procedure. Later,
a detective named Krasovsky will testify that he saw investigator Mashkevich doing
exactly that, and he didn’t fight over every little thing. That doesn’t explain everything in his
deposition but I’ll deal with other issues as they come up.
You can see the problem.
The investigator can use his own theory of the case to shape what he
writes down. If he turns out to be
wrong, the witness has to be recalled and may have forgotten precisely what the
investigator should have written down before.
She may also be dead or out of the country, both of which happened over
the course of the investigation.
That assumes, of course, that he is conscientious enough to
recall witnesses. If he is arrogant,
stupid, lazy, or prejudiced (or bribed), he might not recall witnesses.
One third or more of the witnesses on the stand up to about
day 12 were illiterate. Although the
investigator read the deposition to them before they signed, they couldn’t
challenge the gaps because they couldn’t read for themselves to make sure the
information wasn’t hidden somewhere.
They couldn’t be at all sure they said a given thing, especially if the
interrogation lasted a long time, or over many days. These people usually were intimidated by
authority as well, and for that reason the witnesses would not challenge an
apparent gap.
Now, the investigator can only know at any point what he
knows, but using that to reject witness information voluntarily offered will
leave potholes in material the attorneys need to conduct the trial.
In the Beilis trial it had another effect. When a witness’ testimony differed from the
deposition because of what the investigator left out, the prosecution did one
or both of two things. They accused the witness of lying on the stand, or they
asked the witness why the investigator – Fenenko or Mashkevich – left the
information out. It comes down to
witness abuse.
It wasn’t their fault, but the prosecution behaved as if it
was.
The key witness today is Mr. Nakonechny, whose "street name" was "Lyagushka". He blasts four important parts of the
prosecution case: the Shakhovskys and their depositions; the ability of
children to get onto the factory grounds; what time of year children rode the
pugger; and the idea that only the Cheberyaks would have known of Andrey being
grabbed.
A truly unbelievable thing happens in the middle of
Nakonechny’s testimony. Vipper suddenly
brings the name of Cheberyak into it and, given the grammar, specifically Vera
Cheberyak and still worse, in connection with the murder but, worst of all,
suggesting that the murder happened in her apartment. No witnesses, so far as the transcript has
recorded, have said anything about her involvement in the murder.
But the indictment does point fingers at Vera over her
carpet, over wallpaper in her apartment.
It takes the word of Zinaida Malitskaya that she heard suspicious noises
in the morning from Vera’s apartment on the date of the murder. It repeats a story Vera’s daughter Lyuda
supposedly told a woman named Ekaterina Dyakon that Andrey was murdered in the
Cheberyak apartment. In other words, the
indictment sets the trial up to ask lots of questions of all of the Cheberyaks,
the results of which you’ll see on days 8 and 9.
Another issue that comes up which probably went under most
people’s radar, is Vipper’s summation of Evdokia Nakonechnaya’s testimony from
1912. He gets things wrong. He elides the fact that she said the fence
went up before Andrey disappeared; he mixes up the details from the 1912
testimony with a phrase she uses in court in 1913 because she can’t remember
any more; and he claims that Zhenya agreed to a play date with Andrey when
Evdokia says Zhenya didn’t go. These are
the exact things the defense was afraid of when they objected to the absence of
Sikorsky and other expert witnesses from the court room during the sessions:
for the prosecution to give them incorrect summaries of what went before and
having the experts testify based on incorrect information. Vipper will continue to make such mistakes as
the trial proceeds.
And then there’s Chekhovskaya’s bombshell. On September 25th, before the witnesses were
administered the oath, she was sitting next to Vera Cheberyak, who tried to get
one of Andrey’s friends to lie on the stand.
Vipper tried to have Chekhovskaya sent off but the defense and the judge
tell her to stay and point out which people heard this, since she doesn’t know
any of their names. The boy involved
testified on day 10.
Viktor Ordynsky testifies today about meeting Vera
Cheberyak. He can’t remember many of the
details but on day 10 they will be confronted with each other. The meeting occurred in the posh Rootsa
restaurant on Kreshchatik in January 1912.
On day 10 they will bicker about this meeting like a couple of nuts for
half an hour to an hour.
Notice that the police screwed up by the numbers.
They didn’t get to the crime scene in a timely way. That let a crowd develop, who were curious and looked into the grotto, disturbing tracks in the snow.
They didn’t protect the crime scene. They swept snow away, destroying tracks.
They altered the crime scene. They dug around the entrance to let in Bailiff Rapota, who was fat.They handled the evidence or let the crowd handle evidence. That wiped out fingerprints.
They can’t agree on the timetable of events.
If this is a true account of what they did, it may have been
normal for them. On March 20, 1911,
nobody knew that a Federal case was going to be manufactured from Yushchinsky’s
murder.
Judge: Fyodor Boldyrev
Prosecution:
Criminal
Prosecutor, Oscar VipperCivil Prosecutor Georgy Zamyslovsky
Private Civil Prosecutor Aleksey Shmakov
Defense:
Oscar
Gruzenberg
Nikolay Karabchevsky
Dmitry Grigorevich-Barsky
Alexandr Zarudny
Vasily Maklakov
To Day 5, "Fonarshchik"
Page
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Witness
|
Notes
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Transcript
|
Translation
|
Statement
|
Leshchenko
|
Policeman, Lukyanovka
district
|
121
|
246
|
1
|
Pogorsky
|
Policeman, Lukyanovka
|
125
|
254
|
162
|
Barshchevsky
|
Staff writer for Kievan Thought
|
130
|
264
|
336
|
Viktor Alekseevich Ordynsky
|
Writer for Kievan Thought
Met Vera Cheberyak at Rootsa in January 1912
|
132
|
269
|
407
|
Kleiman
|
Questioned about her charwoman’s gossip
|
137
|
279
|
568
|
Anna Zabudskaya
|
The Prikhodkos’ landlady
|
138
|
282
|
631
|
Maria Makshilova
|
Involved in finding the furnace repairman, Yashchenko
|
139
|
284
|
706
|
Konon Zabudsky
|
The Prikhodkos’ landlord
|
141
|
288
|
752
|
Mikhail Nakonechny
|
Vera Cheberyak’s neighbor
Crucial to disproving material parts of the government
theory
|
142
|
292
|
872
|
Evdokia Nakonechnaya
|
Mikhail’s daughter
Disproves two key points in Lyuda’s testimony
|
152
|
313
|
1258
|
Simonenko
|
Mrs. Kleiman’s charwoman
|
156
|
322
|
1417
|
Nechaeva
|
Minimal contribution
|
157
|
324
|
1439
|
Petrenko
|
Minimal contribution
|
157
|
324
|
1455
|
Chekhovskaya
|
Witnessed Vera Cheberyak suborning testimony in witness
room, see also day 10
|
157
|
324
|
1461
|
Kolbasova
|
Widow of Luka Prikhodo’s boss
|
158
|
327
|
1540
|
Ruban
|
Natalya Yushchinskaya’s employee
|
159
|
329
|
1567
|
Tolkachev
|
Minimal contribution
|
160
|
331
|
1611
|
Stepashkina
|
Minimal contribution
|
160
|
331
|
1627
|
Zhukovsky
|
Matvey? Friend of
Fyodor Nezhinsky
|
160
|
332
|
1641
|
© Patricia Jo
Heil, 2013-2018 All Rights Reserved
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