Mykolaiv Court Delays Appeal Hearing for Murder Convict Mykhailo Chobotar to July 17

The Mykolaiv Court of Appeal has postponed until July 17 the hearing of the appeal filed by lawyer Andriy Leshchenko against the verdict by which the Primorskyi Court of Odesa convicted his client Mykhailo Chobotar of the murder of a girl in Loschynivka.

As Andriy Leshchenko told Intent, the court has repeatedly postponed the consideration of this case.

The lawyer said that he believes such actions of the court are a deliberate delay in the consideration of this case, not wanting to make any decision.

"The Mykolaiv Court of Appeal hardly ever considers the case, we meet for 20 minutes every six months, they drag it out and do not want to make any decision," the lawyer said.

For example, on September 26, 2024, the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal was supposed to hold a hearing to consider the appeal, but the hearing was postponed to January 16, 2025, due to the delay of Ivanov's lawyer, who was stuck in a traffic jam. Despite a request to wait a few minutes, the judge decided to set a new date for the hearing.

Prior to that, during the hearing, the lawyers filed a motion to change the measure of restraint for their client Mikhail Chobotar. However, the court denied this request. In May 2024, the court decided to consider the appeals via videoconference with the Odesa pre-trial detention center. They also decided to involve an interpreter, because the convicted Mikhail Chobotar does not understand Ukrainian.

As a reminder, the consideration of lawyer Andrii Leshchenko 's appeal against the verdict by which the Prymorskyi Court of Odesa convicted his client Mykhailo Chobotar of the murder of a girl in Loschynivka was transferred to the Mykolaiv Court of Appeal in December 2023. Since then, the judges have been studying the case.

The case was transferred to Mykolaiv because the panel of judges of the Odesa Court of Appeal, which considered the complaint on September 22, 2023, recused themselves. The fact is that 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. This decision has not yet been enforced.

Because of this, lawyer Andriy Leshchenko filed a motion to disqualify the two judges in June 2023, but the panel refused to grant the motion. According to the Dignity Legal Monitoring Center, lawyer Serhiy Ivanov filed a second motion to recuse the judges, but it was also unsuccessful.

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 notes that they 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. The attacker did not admit his guilt in court. In August 2021, the State Bureau of Investigation resumed investigating the facts of the possible torture of Mykhailo Chebotar.

In November 2020, the chairman of the judicial board of the Primorsky Court, Viktor Ivanov, announced the conclusion of the repeated forensic medical examination, which was ordered by the Primorsky Court a year ago at the request of defense lawyer Serhiy Ivanov. This conclusion confirmed the alibi of the accused.

Кирило Бойко