Mendel Beilis -- The Indictment

This is the summary of the second day of the Mendel Beilis trial, which occurred on 26 September, 1913 on the Julian calendar (“O.S.” which stands for Old Style), 9 October, 1913 on the Gregorian calendar (“N.S.” which stands for New Style). 

This day occupies pages 17 through 67 of Volume I, part 1, of the transcript.

 See the transcript translation for the second day.

 

This is the first of 33 grueling days of work for everybody involved.  The court sat on this case 7 days a week for between 12 and 14 hours each day. 

The first order of business is reading the indictment.  It takes up 20 pages at the start of the trial.  It was issued May 23, 1913; Beilis was arrested July 23, 1911.  It was the second indictment issued; the first came out January 15, 1912.

The indictment governed the trial – or it was supposed to.  Rules of procedure prohibited the defense from raising any issue not documented in the indictment, even if it was new exonerating evidence.   The exception was if a witness raised an issue and the prosecution asked questions about it.

On this very day such a thing happens.  Andrey’s preparatory tutor, Dmitry Mochugovsky, volunteers the information that flyers were handed out at Andrey’s funeral which accused the Jews of the murder, and the prosecution questions him about it.  It creates a crisis because it shows that ritual murder was raised as an issue the day after the second of two autopsies performed on Andrey, while the government theory pretends that the charge of ritual murder developed out of the evidence.  This crisis develops in stages throughout the trial as other evidence about the flyers comes out. 

In fact the ritual murder charge was illegal; in 1906 the Duma repealed a law allowing a charge of “murder through motives of religious fanaticism,” a cover term for ritual murder.  The Russian Senate, a judiciary council, also prohibited charges being leveled that weren’t in the criminal code, a concept common to courts since 1813 when a Bavarian jurist reformed the Bavarian penal code to include the rule: Nullum crimen, nulla poena sine praevia lege poenali, there is no crime and should be no punishment without a previously-adopted penal law.

A Russian trial was a court of inquiry that presented all the evidence to the jury.  As a result, the Beilis jury heard hours of testimony that later turned out to be faked by the government, or nonsense presented by members of the Black Hundreds like Golubev, Rozmitalsky, Poznyakov, Akatsatov and Galkin.  The trial basically proceeds through the evidence in the order presented in the indictment.  Information was not presented as a united thread, but piece by piece as each witness was called to the stand.

You will find the testimony confusing in places.  There are a number of reasons for that.

• This type of trial did not sift information for truth.  It was completely up to the jury to decide who spoke the truth.  You will come across rumor, gossip, faked information, and perjury as you read.
• The questioning is often disorganized.  The prosecution does not go through a person’s testimony in a specific order designed to bring the story out clearly.  I believe this was a deliberate attempt to confuse the jury so that they would take the path of least resistance and vote to convict.
• The judge is an examining magistrate.  He puts in questions anywhere he feels like it, and often without reference to the last question asked by an attorney or the last answer given by a witness.  Combined with the prosecution’s tactics, this probably had a goal of confusing the witness.  Either that or the judge would literally wake up and realize that he had missed something.
• The questions seem to assume that the witness knows something he or she may not know, or certainly may not remember.  The trial took place two years after some of them gave depositions to the forensic investigator, and the depositions don’t necessarily contain the information the prosecution wants to support its case.
• Up to about day 11, many of the witnesses are illiterate.  You won’t find dates and times in their testimony because they didn’t read calendars or newspapers or keep diaries.  Most of what they know comes from rumor or gossip, and most of what they personally did or saw they have forgotten because the government didn’t bring the case into court in a timely way.

You will find the term “forensic investigator” throughout the transcript.  This official did not go out with a toolkit and collect and then analyze physical evidence.  He was involved in meetings about the case with the detectives and the secret police, but his main job was to take depositions and file paperwork.  There were two forensic investigators in the Beilis case, Fenenko who worked in 1911, and Mashkevich who worked in 1912.  References to them are usually to their title and not their name, and you won’t know which is which until you figure out what year the given witness was involved in the case.  By and large, Fenenko took depositions from everybody up to about day 11, but Mashkevich called back some of them, such as Cheberyak.  Mashkevich is the only one who deposed Brazul-Brushkovsky, Krasovsky, Makhalin, and Karaev. 

The boys who testify toward the end of today begin the breakdown of the case against Mendel Beilis.  The boys who knew Andrey from Slobodka never played at the Zaitsev factory with him; the boys who knew Andrey from school never played with him at all; and the boys who played with Andrey in Lukyanovka hadn’t seen him for a year before his death because that was when his family moved from Lukyanovka to Nikolskaya Slobodka.  The only person who testified that Andrey was at the factory on the day of his murder was Lyudmila Cheberyak on day 8.

Another problem introduced today that everybody ignores is the absence journal from Andrey’s school.  The government theory says Andrey was in school on Friday March 11.  The absence journal says he was absent.  This is confirmed by a newspaper article read at trial on day 15.

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

To Day 3, "The Finding"

 

		Page
Witness	Notes	Transcript	Translation	Statement
Aleksandra Prikhodko	Andrey’s mother Introduces evidence tampering issue	40	76	127/128
Dmitry Mochugovsky	Andrey’s preparatory tutor Introduces anti-Jewish flyer controversy	52	100	603
E. Bogdanov	Andrey’s school teacher Introduces government theory problem; Andrey absent March 11	58	113	789
Rozov	At Andrey’s school	62	120	943
Pogulyansky	Andrey’s school doorkeeper	64	124	1019
Lyubchenko	Zaitsev factory laborer Discusses factory arson	64	125	1036
Nikolay Zinin	Andrey’s friend from Slobodka	69	135	1164
Pavel Pushka	Andrey’s neighbor from Slobodka	69	136	1203
Maria (?) Pushka	Pavel’s sister (?)	72	142	1288
Konstantin Dobzhansky	From Lukyanovka Nephew of Aleksandr Dobzhansky from day 4	74	144	1362
Konovalov	Andrey’s friend from Lukyanovka	75	147	1408
Levitsky	Andrey’s friend	76	149	1444
Ermolovich	Andrey’s friend from school	76	149	1452
Golovinsky	Andrey’s friend from school	76	150	1471
Berezovsky	Andrey’s friend from school	77	152	1515
Andrey Maistrenko	Andrey’s friend from Lukyanovka	78	153	1520
Artasevich	Andrey’s friend from school	78	153	1536
Markevich	Andrey’s friend from school	78	154	1562
Klepatsky	Andrey’s friend from Lukyanovka	80	157	1619
Lyubimtsev	Andrey’s friend from Lukyanovka	80	158	1628

© Patricia Jo Heil, 2013-2018