Russian journalists find 50,000 court rulings between 2017 and 2018 that mostly duplicate previous convictions

In a new report, the newspaper Novaya Gazeta studied 780,000 verdicts issued by Russian courts between 2017 and 2018, and found that 50,000 of these rulings were at least 80-percent copied from decisions previously issued by the same judges.

Mostly copied verdicts are most common in rulings against defendants convicted of illegally acquiring and possessing narcotics. Of 136,000 such convictions, Novaya Gazeta’s study found nearly 25,500 verdicts (19 percent) that were largely copied from previous rulings. In terms of percentage, the most common copied verdicts were discovered in unpaid alimony cases (28.9 percent of 370 rulings) and draft dodging (26 percent of 294 rulings).

Sociologist Kirill Titaev told Novaya Gazeta that few unique details typically distinguish drug cases: “By and large, it’s just the address, the type of drug, and the weight.” Information in cases involving unpaid alimony and conscription evasion is also mostly repetitive, as well. For example, alimony cases always cite two facts: that alimony was assigned and that it wasn’t paid. “It’s completely normal that the verdicts duplicate the same text,” Titaev argues.

Novaya Gazeta found the most matching court decisions in the Bryansk region’s Suzemsky District Court (46 percent), St. Petersburg’s Vyborgsky District Court (45 percent, while duplicated verdicts made up just 8 percent of the rulings found in the neighboring district court), the Astrakhan region’s Limansky District Court (42 percent), Chechnya’s Urus-Martan Court (41 percent), and Dagestan’s Khasavyurt Court (39 percent). The individual judge with the most duplicated verdicts was Rinat Safin, who serves in Kazan’s Volga District Court. Over two years, Safin issued 200 rulings, 122 of which repeated large sections of previous verdicts. Eighty-three of these rulings were perfect duplicates.

The study found the lowest rates of copied verdicts in the Moscow region’s Korolevsky District Court, Novosibirsk’s Zaeltsovsky District Court, Penza’s Zheleznodorozhny District Court, Chita’s Zheleznodorozhny District Court, and Krasnoyarsk Krai’s Lesosibirsk District Court, where duplicated rulings made up less than 0.4 percent of all decisions. “The main thing we see is that there are courts where there are a lot of copy-paste [verdicts], and courts where there aren't. [...] This means that either judges or investigative agencies approach cases with varying degrees of individuality,” Titaev says.

Novaya Gazeta separately analyzed duplicate rulings in so-called “poppy cases,” where suspects were prosecuted for manufacturing drugs from poppy seeds (journalists identified 653 convictions for illegal drug trafficking that mention the phrase “poppy seeds”). The newspaper found a large number of mostly copied verdicts in four courts: Bashkiria’s Tuymazinsky District Court, Stavropol’s Georgievsky and Kislovodsk Courts, and North Ossetia’s Mozdoksky District Court.

In 16 verdicts issued by the Tuymazinsky District Court, the defendants first went to an outdoor concession stand for poppy seeds, and then to a store for a solvent, before a police officer came to their homes that same day and observed illicit drug production. In two different cases heard by the Mozdoksky District Court, the details laid out in the verdicts are nearly identical. Novaya Gazeta notes that both hearings were expedited after the suspects confessed.