Once again, Mkurnali have been able to step in a provide a legal defence for a young formerly homeless man. Without their help he could have been imprisoned for four years.
The story started for Mkurnali when some of the homeless young people they help tried to get hold of their friend Yuri, who had also been helped by Mkurnali in the past. When his phone was out of action for some time, they got worried and asked us for help. This is when we found out that Yuri had been arrested on charges of theft.
According to the prosecution, on the evening of July 13 Yuri was in the S. settlement in Tbilisi, when he decided to illegally appropriate someone else’s property. He took advantage of the fact that his neighbor, Anna, had left her car parked with its door open while she opened the front door of her house, to steal her handbag from the car.
The victim’s statement said that she herself recognized Yuri and that when she ran back at the screams of the children, Yuri ran away, holding her leather bag in his hand, and hid down the street. Her 9-year-old daughter confirmed to her that their neighbor Yuri stole the bag and he ran up the street. The next morning, the victim’s husband found Anna’s documents and bag thrown in their yard. The contents were no longer there.
The case also included a neighbor’s testimony, who said that at the time of the incident, he saw a man he did not know running down the street with the stolen bag.
When we interviewed him, Yuri told us that he had had a fever and was sleeping at the time. Unfortunately, he did not have any reliable evidence of this, nor was there any CCTV near the apartment he rented.
The case included statements from Yuri, the victim, and a witness, which did not match each other. At the investigation stage, Yuri did not have a lawyer, and the defense did not question the victim or witnesses. After a set of questions asked by us at the court hearing, the victim changed her testimony and stated that she recognized the robber Yuri only by his general appearance and the identity was later confirmed only by what her children said. The court did not take into account the changed testimony and found Yuri guilty based only on the materials available at the investigation stage and sentenced him to 4 years in prison.
We appealed the decision and filed a request with the Court of Appeal, citing the newly discovered circumstances and requested that fingerprint evidence be presented. The examination report confirmed that none of the fingerprints matched Yuri’s fingerprints. Due to these facts, namely the victim’s substantially different, conjectural testimony, the expert’s response, and the lack of proper evidence, the court fully agreed with our request and, due to the lack of proper evidence, found Yuri not guilty and released him from the courtroom.
We are very grateful to our donors for funding Mkurnali’s legal service, an essential protection for vulnerable young people in Tbilisi.
