MOSCOW. Nov 5 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court has upheld the conviction of Robert Woodland, a citizen of both the United States and Russia, sentenced earlier by a lower court to 12.5 years in a high-security penitentiary on a count of attempted dealing in narcotic drugs.
"The Ostankino District Court's sentence of July 4, 2024 with respect to Woodland has been left unchanged and the appeal against the sentence turned down," the court told Interfax on Tuesday.
Woodland's defense team asked the court either to mitigate the sentence given to the man or return the case to a lower court for a retrial.
The prosecution sought to increase the term of imprisonment given to Woodland to 12 years and eight months.
Woodland was sentenced to 12.5 years of imprisonment at a high-security penal colony for selling drugs on a large scale.
Woodland's defense said at the appeals court that its client confessed to part of the charges brought against him.
Earlier, the Moscow Prosecutor's Office said that Woodland, "acting as a member of an organized group on January 3, 2024, fulfilling the organizers' instructions, being in a forest in Mytishchy, Moscow region, took out of a cache a large amount of a narcotic substance, mephedrone (4-methylmethcathinone) weighing in total at least 46.91 grams." Woodland took the drugs to an apartment in Moscow, where he packaged them in 49 packs for further illegal sale.
Woodland was detained while trying to stash the drugs.
Woodland, 32, a citizen of Russia and the United States, was detained and arrested in Moscow in January 2024.
Woodland was born in the Perm region and is registered to live there, but lived in the Moscow region. He said in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda in 2020 he had been adopted by a family from the U.S. in 1993 and he had returned to Russia in 2020.