VLADIVOSTOK. March 13 (Interfax) - Vladivostok's Ninth General Jurisdiction Court of Cassation has set its hearing into a cassation appeal filed by a defense lawyer for U.S. citizen Gordon Black, convicted in Russia's Primorye Territory of theft and murder threat, for April, a court representative told Interfax.
"The session has been scheduled for April 7," he said.
It was reported earlier that defense lawyers for Black filed a cassation appeal seeking to find Black not guilty of threatening murder and theft inflicting considerable damage on a victim. Instead, the lawyer asked for the charge to be requalified as theft and the punishment given to Black reduced in view of mitigating circumstances.
On June 19, the Pervomaisky District Court in Vladivostok sentenced Black to three years and nine months in a general security penitentiary and granted the victim's civil claim for 10,000 rubles.
Investigators established that Black was accused of grabbing his girlfriend, whose apartment in Vladivostok he lived in from April 2024, by the neck in a quarrel in May. The woman said she took his actions as a threat to her life. Following this, Black, who had no money of his own, stole 10,000 rubles from the woman's wallet and spent it on his needs, including a hotel room where he was found and detained.
Members of the Primorye Public Monitoring Commission visited Black at the pretrial detention facility. The U.S. citizen had no complaints.
The Primorye Territorial Court dismissed an appeal from Black's defense on August 19, and the sentence took effect.
Black said in an interview with the Vesti-Primorye television channel in October he was hoping to return to his home country under the prisoner swap program.