Judge decides not to remove court composition in Tallinna Sadam case

Harju County Court judge Kristina Valiste decided against recusing the composition of the court from hearing the Tallinna Sadam criminal case. Photo: Taavi Sepp

Harju County Court judge Kristina Valiste decided against recusing the composition of the court from hearing the Tallinna Sadam criminal case on Thursday.

As the judge did to grant the application of the defense regarding the removal of the court composition, the case will continue to be heard by the same composition.

The defense attorneys in the Tallinna Sadam criminal case, which started anew in the Harju County Court, on Tuesday requested that judge Kristina Valiste and lay judge Vladimir Simagin be removed from hearing the case, as they have already seen the evidence presented.

According to Andri Rohtla, the lawyer of Tallinna Sadam ex-manager Ain Kaljurand, the court should not have seen all the evidence that will be presented in the restarted trial.

«The court is allowed to see the evidence of the prosecution only if they have been presented to the court and accepted, for the sake of impartiality. We are in a situation where two judges in the court composition have already seen them,» Rohtla said.

Rohtla recalled that for the same reason, the Viru County Court issued a ruling on June 1 last year, which dismissed a judge. The chair of the Viru County Court noted at the time that although they have no doubts about the judge's impartiality, the court proceedings must not only be, but also appear to be impartial.

«I have no doubts about the impartiality of the judge and the lay judge in the Tallinna Sadam trial, but the fact that they have already seen the evidence does not seem impartial, so I propose to remove judge Kristina Valiste and lay judge Vladimir Simagin,» Rohtla said.

A new lay judge will start in the Tallinna Sadam trial, which started again on Tuesday. According to Rohtla, judge Kristina Valiste and lay judge Vladimir Simagin are in a completely different situation compared to the new lay judge.

He noted that the prosecutor's office has previously announced its intention to submit a request to consider the evidence published so far in the Tallinna Sadam trial as already published.

«With this, the new lay judge would be in a completely different situation compared to the rest of the court,» Rohtla said.

The defense attorneys of the other defendants supported Rohtla's request.

State Prosecutor Denis Tsasovskih said that the request is not justified and he asked that it be rejected.

«We were ready for the defense attorneys to make a request to remove the court composition at today's session, we just did not know for what reason,» Tsasovskih added.

He noted that previously seeing the evidence has not been considered a problem so far, such as when a pre-trial judge examines a surveillance file and later participates in the trial of the same case.

According to the prosecutor, the court panel makes the final decision in the deliberation room, so the fact that part of the court panel has seen the evidence before does not essentially change the situation.

It emerged last week that the hearing of the criminal case of listed Estonian port company Tallinna Sadam is starting from the beginning, as lay judge Peeter Kaasik, who was part of the court composition, submitted a request to be dismissed due to his health condition. According to the law, in such a case, the process must be started again and the court scheduled new hearings until January 2025.

If a lay judge is released from the composition of the court, the trial can only continue if there is a reserve lay judge. In the Tallinna Sadam criminal case, in addition to the two lay judges, a reserve lay judge was also appointed, unfortunately, they were removed from the proceedings last June, as doubts arose about their impartiality.

Judge Kristina Valiste proposed to the trial participants to apply the possibilities of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which allow to consider previously published and examined evidence as published by agreement of the parties, and not to start publishing and examining them again at the court hearing. Presumably, the defense attorneys will disagree with this.

At the Tallinna Sadam trial, which began in May 2019, the prosecution's evidence managed to be published, and before the lay judge was removed, the hearing of the first defense witness was in progress.

Valiste is of the opinion that the evidence has actually already been published and examined in public court hearings, therefore, at this point in time, it would not be contrary to the public principle to consider it as published. Therefore, the stage where the procedure was previously left unfinished, that is the questioning of the defense witness, should be reached by repeating as few actions as possible.

According to attorney Paul Keres, the defense attorney of Tallinna Sadam ex-manager Ain Kaljurand, the reasonable procedural time for the process has long passed. According to him, it was not possible to achieve the procedure time already last year, in 2022.

«Restarting the process will not change anything for the better here,» Keres told the daily Postimees last week.

State Prosecutor Denis Tsasovskih is of the opinion that it is possible to continue the court proceedings in the court case and reach a solution within a reasonable period of time.

«We see an opportunity to continue with the court proceedings and we believe that it is possible to reach a ruling and its entry into force within a reasonable period of time, if all the evidence examined in the court proceedings so far is considered published,» he added.

According to the prosecutor, the current procedure provides for such a possibility.

«In this case, there would be a delay in the proceedings in the extent of only a few session days. However, this requires the parties' sincere interest in proceeding with the matter,» he said.