Brittney Griner Appears in Russian Court as Lawyers Plead for Leniency

Brittney Griner, a basketball star from the USA, was taken by a masked officer with a dog and handcuffed to her wrists.

One of the best players of her generation, Ms. Griner has been caught up in a confrontation between Russia and the United States over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As the case is heard in a courtroom, the wrangling over Ms. Griner’s fate has shifted increasingly to the diplomatic arena, with Russia and the United States signaling her possible involvement in an exchange for high-profile Russians in U.S. custody.

Last week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said the American government had “put a substantial proposal on the table,” although he declined to discuss the details. In their first telephone conversation since the war in Ukraine, he discussed the matter Thursday with Sergey V. Lavrov. However, there were no breakthroughs and Anna S. Sotnikova (a judge in Khimki near Moscow) will deliver a verdict in this case.

Ms. Griner, 31, was detained in a Moscow airport while traveling to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to play for a local team there about one week before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Two vape cartridges containing less that one gram of hashish were found in Ms. Griner’s luggage by customs officials.

However, news of her arrest was only made public after the war began. She was charged for trying to smuggle in a substantial amount of illegal drugs into Russia. This offense can carry a sentence of up 10 years in prison.

Ms. Griner pleaded guilty to the charges last month. She stressed that she did not intend to break Russian law and that the illegal substance was in her luggage because of an oversight when packing in a hurry. According to her legal team, a guilty plea in Russia does not end a case. The proceedings will continue until mid-August.

On Tuesday, Ms. Griner’s lawyers called in an expert, who testified that the analysis of vape cartridges carried out by the state did not meet Russian legal requirements.

Thus, “it would be wrong to establish the exact amount” of the illegal substance, said Aleksandr Boikov, Ms. Griner’s lawyer. According to the Russian criminal code, the severity of punishment depends on the amount of narcotics discovered in the defendant’s possession, among other things.

Ms. Griner’s legal team is trying to persuade the judge to soften the eventual sentence. They had one of Ms. Griner’s Russian teammates, Yevgeniya Belyakova, testify, along with the team’s director and doctor. Her legal team also argued she was authorized to use medical cannabis in Arizona, where she plays for the Phoenix Mercury from 2013 to treat pain from injuries to her spine, ankle, and knees.

Ms. Griner, who was giving her own testimony in court last Wednesday, described how she was confronted with a confusing and sometimes bewildering Russian legal process during detention. She said that her rights were not explained to and that a lawyer was only provided 16 hours after her detention began. Ms. Griner also said that she had been instructed to sign papers with no explanation of what they implied and that an interpreter, provided by the law enforcement, had translated “almost nothing.”

The hearing was rescheduled for Thursday, when both sides will present closing arguments, according to Maria Blagovolina, a lawyer at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin and Partners, which is also representing Ms. Griner.