«Novgorod case» 2007

Wiki: The Novgorod Case is a criminal case against Antonina Fedorova, who was charged in 2007 with the attempted murder of her two-year-old daughter Alisa in Veliky Novgorod. On February 26, 2007, Alisa fell into a stairwell from the third floor. The only witness was an 11-year-old boy standing on the landing one floor above. He told his neighbors that he saw "the older girl throw the younger one." According to Fedorova, the incident was an accident: the girl climbed through the stairwell railing herself, Fedorova tried to grab her, but she fell down. On March 19, 2007, Fedorova was charged with attempted murder.
The defendant did not admit her guilt. In July 2008, a closed trial was held, the jury found the defendant guilty, Fedorova did not appear at the next hearing, disappeared along with her daughter and was wanted for almost 16 years. In 2023, the only direct witness, Yegor Kudrov, died of a drug overdose.
In the spring of 2024, Antonina Martynova was detained by the police in Stavropol and placed in a pre-trial detention center in Veliky Novgorod. The case continued from the same stage where it was interrupted 16 years ago. On May 7, 2024, the court found Martynova guilty and sentenced her to 9 years. The First Appellate Court of General Jurisdiction replaced the actual sentence with a suspended sentence (with a probationary period of four years), releasing Antonina Fedorova from custody. I went to Veliky Novgorod to shoot for an article about this case in Gala magazine in the summer of 2007.

I shot Antonina Fedorova, her future husband Kirill Martynov, her daughter Alisa and Alisa's grandmother. I was at the place where the girl fell into the stairwell. And at the place where the witness was standing. In my personal opinion:
1. The witness, an 11-year-old child, could not clearly see what was happening on the floor below - he was not tall enough for this, he would have had to lean far over the railing. This would have been obvious to anyone who came to that spot.
2. The victim, Alisa, Antonina's daughter, looked like a lively, cheerful, healthy and happy child, without obvious traces of any psychological trauma.
3. Antonina herself, who by that time had served time in a pre-trial detention center, looked seriously traumatized by what was happening.

I was deeply shocked that a guilty verdict for attempted murder could be rendered only and exclusively on the basis of the testimony of an 11-year-old child. In addition to the obvious insufficiency of such evidence for prosecution, it seems to me obvious that such a court decision is irresponsible and cruel towards the 11-year-old witness himself, who is being saddled with a disproportionate burden of responsibility for the fate of other people.