Maternity ward: Kaliningrad doctors were again found guilty of murdering a child

The jury found the former chief physician of Kaliningrad Maternity Hospital No. 4, Elena Belaya, and neonatologist Elina Sushkevich guilty of murdering a newborn in 2018. The case was heard in the Moscow Regional Court — it was there in 2022 that these doctors were already sentenced to 9 and 9.5 years in prison, but the Presidium of the Supreme Court sent their case for a new hearing. According to investigators, the defendants deliberately injected the infant with a lethal dose of magnesium sulfate in order to simulate his death in the womb and thereby prevent the hospital's statistics on infant mortality from deteriorating. The jury decided that the defendants did not deserve leniency. The doctors are due to be sentenced on July 31. The details of the case are in the Izvestia article.

What were Belaya and Sushkevich accused of?

On July 29, a jury in the Moscow Regional Court issued a verdict to Kaliningrad doctors Elena Belaya and Elina Sushkevich in the case of the murder of a baby. They unanimously found the defendants guilty of intentionally causing the death of a child born in a Kaliningrad maternity hospital in November 2018, and not deserving of leniency.

According to investigators, on November 5, Zarimkhon Akhmedova, an Uzbek citizen, was admitted to maternity hospital No. 4 in Kaliningrad, who gave birth to a boy weighing about 700 grams at an early stage of pregnancy. Since the baby was born deeply premature, the neonatology intensive care unit of the regional perinatal center was called to the hospital. Anaesthetist and intensive care specialist Elina Sushkevich was among the doctors who arrived.

The investigation believed that Yelena Belaya, who was acting as the chief physician of the maternity hospital at that time, was the organizer of the crime, and Elina Sushkevich was the perpetrator. Belaya, investigators believe, instructed Sushkevich, who arrived at the hospital, to inject the infant with a lethal dose of magnesium sulfate in order to simulate his death in the womb.

According to the investigation, the motive for the crime was that Belaya was waiting for reassignment to the post of chief physician at that time, so the deterioration in infant mortality rates could affect these prospects. The imitation of the intrauterine death of a child was supposed, according to investigators, to help preserve positive statistics and the image of the medical institution.

The case file contains an audio recording of Elena Belaya's conversation with her subordinates on November 6, 2018, that is, the morning after the birth of the child. On the recording, the chief physician chastises subordinates for providing intensive care to a child in serious condition and demands to rewrite his medical history.

The case caused a great resonance — a part of the medical community stood up for the defendants. In particular, Leonid Roshal, a resident of the National Medical Chamber, issued a statement in which he pointed out that the conclusions of the investigation "about the viability" of the child were exaggerated.

As Leonid Roshal stated at the time, "a deeply premature boy was born in an agonal state," and of the signs of a "live birth," he had only a heartbeat: the child was not breathing, and he had no pulse. The letter also says that the results of the spectrographic examination, which showed a high concentration of magnesium sulfate in the baby's internal organs, "could not serve as evidence of murder," since it was conducted only five months after his death.

"In addition to magnesium, the child's blood levels of zinc and iron were elevated," Leonid Roshal told Izvestia after one of the court sessions. — It's just that my mother received drugs during pregnancy that contain both. There are a lot of things in the medical history that a child could die from.

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At the same time, Leonid Roshal stated that he considers Elena Belaya guilty of falsifying medical documents, and called for her to be stripped of her medical diploma.

But there were other opinions. Igor Artyukhov, editor of the Medical Russia professional website, recalled Belaya's compromising conversation with doctors and her instructions about falsifying documents, considering this to be weighty evidence in the case.

How the case of Belaya and Sushkevich developed

Belaya and Sushkevich were charged with the murder of a minor in a deliberately helpless state (Part 2 of Article 105 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) back in 2019, after which the six-year history of its consideration in the courts began.

In 2020, the Kaliningrad Regional Court jury acquitted Sushkevich and Belaya, but the prosecutor's office challenged this decision. In May 2021, the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction overturned the acquittal. The case was sent for reconsideration to the Moscow Regional Court, which eventually issued an indictment in September 2022, sentencing the defendants to 9 and 9.5 years in a penal colony.

In December 2023, the Supreme Court rejected the cassation appeal of the defendants' defenders against the verdict. The court found the defense's arguments that the convicts had no intention of committing a crime unconvincing.

But in October 2024, the Presidium of the Supreme Court heeded the arguments of the convicts' lawyers and sent the case for reconsideration. And in December of the same year, the First Court of Appeal of General Jurisdiction overturned the verdict of the Moscow Regional Court and decided to reopen the trial.

For the second time, the Moscow Regional Court began considering the case of Belaya and Sushkevich on January 1, 2025.

At all stages of the trial, the defendants' lawyers tried to prove to the jury and the court that it was impossible to cause the infant's death with a high dose of magnesium sulfate. According to them, the child died of his own death.

The defendants pleaded not guilty, but Elina Sushkevich confessed to falsifying documents.

What other doctors said

At the last trial in the Moscow Regional Court, the staff of the fourth maternity hospital acted as witnesses. One of the obstetrician-gynecologists said that the victim Akhmedova was admitted to the hospital on the evening of November 5, 2018, "felt bad and cried."

"A deeply premature baby was born, but it was alive," the witness said. — He was born on the 24th week of pregnancy, weighing 700 grams.

At the morning meeting, the doctors' shift on duty reported on their work — they reported the number of births per day with the names of the patients, the time of birth and the state of health. Elena Belaya, according to the witness, used obscene language and threats, ordered to rewrite the history of childbirth and the history of newborns, to inform the victim that the child was stillborn.

"Such children should not be born alive, we are spoiling statistics, spoiling our reputation," the witness retold Belaya's position. Also, according to her, the chief physician of the maternity hospital was striving for a promotion.

The death of the child became known after 12:00 p.m. on the same day.

Another witness, a senior nurse at maternity hospital No. 4, noted that until 9 a.m. she saw a child in an incubator on a ventilator. The baby was alive, the monitor was showing a heartbeat. Then, according to the witness, Elena Belaya came and kicked the nurses out of the room into the corridor.

"Some time after that, she came out and told me to clean the room because the child had died," the witness said. — Two days later, all the data related to Akhmedova's birth and the names of the drugs used were covered up by Belaya's order.

An obstetrician-gynecologist, who delivered the victim, also spoke at the trial. She said that by 12 o'clock the next day, she heard from the staff that the child had died. This message was given without details.

"The child was alive, and the mother was very worried about him because she knew about his serious condition," the doctor said. — At the general meeting, all the doctors also knew about the child's condition.

Larisa Guseva, the victim's lawyer, told Izvestia after the verdict was announced that she was pleased with the jury's decision.

"The decision is unanimous, which makes it much more difficult to break this verdict in the appeal," the lawyer said. — It was important for us to bring this matter to an end, because anyone could be in my client's place.

And Leonid Roshal, commenting on the decision, noted that he wanted to thank the jury, but not those who were considering the case now, but the Kaliningrad ones who acquitted the doctors in 2020.

— I also want to say a big thank you to the Supreme Court for returning the case for additional investigation. This is of great importance," he told Izvestia. — I don't quite understand why the case was returned to the same court, which had already convicted the doctors.

According to Leonid Roshal, the previous consideration of the case "did not stand up to any criticism," because "the judge acted not as a judge, but as a prosecutor."

— The fact that they are not guilty, and that Sushkevich did not kill the child, I say as a specialist who has devoted 20 years to newborn surgery, — said the doctor.

What could be the new deadline?

After a guilty verdict is issued, the court can either convict or dismiss the jury, Evgenia Ryzhkova, a lawyer for the Yakovlev and Partners law group, told Izvestia. When the court appoints a new sentence, the previous sentence will not be taken into account, but the court may take into account the period of detention already served by the defendants.

"The crime of which Belaya and Sushkevich are accused provides for 8 to 20 years in prison, and as a last resort — up to life imprisonment," the lawyer said. — However, according to the law, life sentences cannot be imposed on women.

If the jury had found the defendants to be deserving of leniency, the court would not have been able to impose more than 11.5 years in prison, but could have imposed a more lenient sentence than is provided for this crime.

The case, according to Evgenia Ryzhkova, was difficult because the jury had to explain not only legal, but also medical issues and subtleties.

— Based on this, the jury had to determine whether the child died of his own death or not, — said the lawyer. – And if not, then who is to blame for this. Such cases are some of the most difficult, even for professional participants in the process. I do not recall such cases of the murder of infants by medical workers, but there are enough criminal cases of causing death by negligence.

A guilty verdict will almost certainly be followed by a guilty verdict, said Andrei Orlov, a lawyer for Aronov & Partners.

"The law allows a judge to overcome the binding force of a verdict and acquit if the court finds that there are no signs of a crime in the defendants' actions," the lawyer said. — The judge also has the right to dismiss the jury and send the case for a new hearing. But in practice, judges rarely use these powers.

The previous sentence with actual imprisonment no longer has legal force for the court, Andrei Orlov noted. At the same time, the term of imprisonment under the new sentence may be either milder or stricter than the previous one. It all depends on the judge's inner conviction, as well as the presence of new arguments from the parties or the factual circumstances presented during the retrial, the lawyer said.

"In practice, higher courts often seek to overturn acquittals, while overturning a guilty verdict could indicate that violations had been committed in the case," the lawyer said.

According to Andrey Orlov, in practice pediatricians, obstetricians and neonatologists are more often accused not of premeditated murder, but of causing death by negligence (art.109 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation). So, in July 2024, the Gagarin District Court of Moscow found three doctors of the capital's maternity hospital No. 4 at the Vinogradov Hospital, obstetricians and gynecologists Giorgi Kaladze and Anastasia Kayumova and the head of the Department of pregnancy pathology Marina Kiria guilty of the death of a baby who did not survive childbirth.

The court released all three defendants from punishment due to the expiration of the statute of limitations, but Kaladze received a one-and-a-half-year suspended sentence for forgery of documents in a medical record.