The "expert" conclusion often contains empty charges - but leads to real charges in the courtroom. Photo: Dmitry Sotnikov.Russia’s practice of specialised court analysis in court emerged quite a while ago: expert evaluations are traditionally conducted in cases that call for “special scientific knowledge”. Normally, the expertise required is either medical (psychiatric, anatomical) or technical; with the notable exception of graphologists, humanities scholars were rarely utilised as forensic experts.
A new field for new players
Everything changed after the active development in the late 1990s and 2000s of special expert evaluation as an institution. Evaluations came to be used in cases of incitement of all kinds of discord (ethnic, racial, religious) were on trial, particularly under Article 282 of the Criminal Code (instigation of hatred).
Experts from the humanities and social sciences have featured in these cases more frequently of late. This includes art critics (who suddenly became pornography specialists, as in the Yury Dmitriyev case), historians (employed in “heroiszation of Nazism” cases), political scientists (“foreign agents”), sociologists and psychologists (“LGBT propaganda”) and religious scholars (“insulting believers’ feelings”). An unexpectedly important role has also come to be played by experts in the field of inclusive education (a case in point being when the European University at St Petersburg had its education license revoked by a court decision in March 2017).
