The WNBA star’s attorneys stated her nine-year sentence was extreme and much increased than common for comparable instances.
MOSCOW, Russia — Lawyers for American basketball star Brittney Griner on Monday filed an appeal towards her nine-year Russian prison sentence for drug possession, Russian news companies reported Monday.
Griner, a middle for the Phoenix Mercury and a two-time Olympic gold medalist, was convicted on Aug. 4. She was arrested in February at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport after vape canisters containing hashish oil had been present in her baggage.
Griner performed for a girls’s basketball workforce in Yekaterinburg through the WNBA offseason.
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Lawyer Maria Blagovolina was quoted by Russian news companies on Monday as saying the appeal was filed, however the grounds of the appeal weren’t instantly clear.
Blagovolina and co-counsel Alexander Boykov stated after the conviction that the sentence was extreme and that in comparable instances defendants have acquired a median sentence of about 5 years, with a couple of third of them granted parole.
Griner admitted that she had the canisters in her baggage, however stated she had inadvertently packed them in haste and that she had no felony intent. Her protection workforce introduced written statements that she had been prescribed hashish to deal with ache.
Before her conviction, the U.S. State Department declared Griner to be “wrongfully detained.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the weird step of unveiling publicly in July that the U.S. had made a “substantial proposal” to get Griner dwelling dwelling, together with Paul Whelan, an American serving a 16-year sentence in Russia for espionage.
Blinken did not elaborate, however The Associated Press and different news organizations have reported that Washington has supplied to free Viktor Bout, a Russian arms supplier who’s serving a 25-year sentence within the U.S. and as soon as earned the nickname the “Merchant of Death.”
On Sunday, a senior Russian diplomat stated change talks have been performed.
“This fairly delicate difficulty of the swap of convicted Russian and U.S. residents is being mentioned by way of the channels outlined by our presidents,” Alexander Darchiev, head of the Foreign Ministry’s North America department, told state news agency Tass. “These people are, certainly, being mentioned. The Russian aspect has lengthy been in search of the discharge of Viktor Bout. The particulars needs to be left to professionals, continuing from the ‘do not harm’ precept.'”
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