Court of Appeal schedules new hearing in Loschynivka murder case for June

After a two-month break, the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal has set a new date for consideration of lawyer Andriy Leshchenko 's appeal against the verdict by which the Primorskyi Court of Odesa sentenced his client Mykhailo Chobotar to life imprisonment for the murder of a girl in the village of Loschynivka.

As the lawyer told Intent, this time the judges are planning to meet to consider the case on June 25 at 13:00.

The court has repeatedly postponed the hearing for various reasons. The last time, on January 22, the hearing was postponed due to Andriy Leshchenko's illness, and before that, on January 30, because an interpreter did not show up for the hearing, and Mykhailo Chobotar does not speak Ukrainian well enough to do without one.

Before that, the meeting was postponed for various reasons throughout the year. In July, Andriy Leshchenko challenged the judges because of delays in the case, but the judges did not grant the motion. The lawyer considers such actions of the court to be a deliberate delay in the consideration of this case, due to the unwillingness to make any decision.

The consideration of the appeal of lawyer Andrii Leshchenko against the verdict by which the Primorskyi Court of Odesa convicted his client Mykhailo Chobotar for the murder of a girl in Loschynivka was transferred to the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal in December 2023. This was after the panel of judges of the Odesa Court of Appeal, which considered the appeal on September 22, recused themselves.

In November 2022, the European Court of Human Rights recognized Ukraine's violation of the European Convention on Inadequate Conditions of Detention of Mykhailo Chobotar, accused of murdering a girl in the village of Loschynivka, Izmail district, Odesa region.

Among other things, it was about the excessive duration of detention and the lack of compensation for illegal detention. Because of this, lawyer Andriy Leshchenko filed a motion to disqualify two judges in June 2023, but the panel refused to grant the motion. For the second time, lawyer Serhiy Ivanov filed a motion to disqualify judges, but it was also unsuccessful.

On June 12, 2023, Andriy Leshchenko filed a motion to disqualify two judges, but it was denied. The lawyer explained that he demanded the recusal of the judges because, to the defense, there had been violations of autodistribution. In addition, the lawyer believed that the judges might be biased.

On February 1, 2023, the Prymorskyi Court of Odesa found Mykhailo Chobotar guilty of the murder of an eight-year-old girl in the village of Loschynivka in the Izmail district of Odesa region and sentenced him to life in prison.

The prosecutor's office insisted that they had proved that in August 2016, while drunk, the man raped the child and, in order to conceal the crime, decided to kill the girl. Taking out a screwdriver he had with him, he struck the victim several times on the head with its handle and stabbed her five times in the chest area with the barbed part. As a result of the injuries, the girl died on the spot. Mikhail Chobotar did not admit his guilt in court.

Кирило Бойко