New legislation introduced to the State Duma by three United Russia deputies proposes banning jury trials for criminal cases involving state secrets, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The bill’s authors said jury members cannot be trusted with state secrets even if they sign nondisclosure agreements and that such cases must only be heard by professional judges.
The bill may give the state more leverage in espionage trials, such as the case of physicist Valentin Danilov, accused of selling secrets to China. Danilov, who said he only used publicly available data, was acquitted by jury in 2003 but convicted at the retrial, where jury members were banned from hearings that discussed whether his information was really classified.
(MT)