The finalists of the II All-Russian competition “Legal profession: a look into the past” had to forget about mobile phones and tablets for a couple of hours today, because it is useless to look for clues about the crime of 1888 on modern gadgets.
According to the argument of the criminal case, which was considered by the Yekaterinburg District Court, the hereditary nobleman of the Ryazan province, Vasily Simonov, was accused of torturing his daughter: he beat her and starved her. And the students of the 21st century, within the framework of an intellectual contest, had to rate the actions of a 36-year-old defendant. The court was then located in a building with striking architecture on the Truda embankment, and before that the house belonged to the court advisor Sevastyanov. Today, the auditorium of the Ural State Law University named after Yakovlev has become the platform for “judicial debates.”
“The competition is dedicated to three commemorative dates: the 160th anniversary of the Great Judicial Reform of 1864, the 90th anniversary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court and the 150th anniversary of the opening of the Yekaterinburg District Court. Given which was the largest court in the Urals, we understood what would happen: “It is a good idea to introduce archival cases into the scientific and legal practice of students. The contest has been running for two years. This year, 12 teams from Russian universities, representing Yekaterinburg, Moscow, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Izhevsk, Perm, received the right to judge the role of judge,” said Vice-Rector for Youth Policy Danil Sergeev.
As noted by Roman Taraborin, head of the Archives Department of the Sverdlovsk region, Simonov’s criminal case has significant historical value and is therefore stored in a special fund, where about seven thousand cases examined by the Yekaterinburg District Court. The materials include an indictment, a list of witnesses called, subpoenas, a brief transcript of the court hearing, and an interview with the witnesses. Lately, interest in archival sources has increased: the queue for the reading room lasts a month, each year about ten thousand people come to leaf through the pages of court documents and other historical references yellowed by time.
“To preserve the heritage, regulatory conditions have been created for documents of this type: from fire alarms, humidity, shade of the room to the temperature, it must be more than 17 to 19 degrees. But anyone can request a file for review and When scanning, we are always happy to see the young people we visit,” says Roman Taraborin.
In terms of difficulty, the competition for future lawyers can be compared to an Olympiad: most of the tasks are related to the history of the post-reform court in Russia in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As crib sheets, the students received an indictment drawn up on the basis of the circumstances of the criminal case, confirmed by interrogations of witnesses, as well as excerpts from the “Code of Penal and Correctional Punishments” of 1885, which they guided to Yekaterinburg. District Court and its statutes.
“During the trial, the students will answer the questions: to what punishment is the nobleman Simonov subject by law in view of the jury’s decision and to whom should the court costs be paid in the criminal case? In addition, the contestants will have to “Prepare the text of the final explanation, which will be presented to the president of the jury. It is very interesting to know what decision the students will make, how they will reason,” explained Natalya Gordeeva, chairwoman of the judicial panel for criminal cases of the Sverdlovsk Regional Court.
Photo: Olga Fatkullina/RG
According to the experts invited to the jury, who are the current judges of the judicial chamber of the criminal courts of the Sverdlovsk region, associate professors of the Department of State History and Law of the Law University and representatives of the State Archive, the result of the Today’s trial may be different. Based on the experience of past competitions, where the juries considered the case against the terrorist Vera Zasulich, the juries (students who assumed this role) made a decision completely opposite to the one that was made at the historical moment (so, remember, it was acquitted).
By the way, as a result of the competition, of the 12 teams of experts, none could rate the actions of the accused Simonov exactly as in the original case. For first-year students, the task was quite difficult, but nine universities accounted for about half of the solution. According to the total results of all stages of the competition, the representatives of the USLU under the name “Women’s Committee” won. Taking into account that in a criminal case with a history of 136 years, in addition to the verdict, documents on the defendant’s appeal were preserved, students will have the opportunity to search the archive for the correct answer to find out if the decision was upheld. or not.
