(Editor’s note: RA drafted this piece on Friday, before the murder of Stanislav Markelov, the lawyer representing the family of Budanov’s victim)

To describe the Russian justice system as flawed and dysfunctional would be an extremely generous understatement, yet however arcane and unfair the system has become, judicial decisions are still made. Charges are filed, hearings held, trials convened, and convictions and even the occasional acquittals are parsed out. And as we have seen lately, certain individuals are even granted parole once in a while – though the process by which these small acts of compassion are distributed is quite far from clear.

The latest news makes the parole issue even more confusing. Last Thursday, the former army colonel Yury Budanov, who was convicted in 2005 for the brutal murder by strangling of eighteen-year-old Elza Kungayeva, walked out of prison after being granted a swift parole. The fact that Budanov was even convicted and spent some time behind bars represented a major victory for human rights in Russia at the time, as he attained a martyr status for extreme nationalists. Lawyer Stanislav Markelov, who has written for this blog, represents the family of Kungayeva and was instrumental in bringing the case to prosecution. Markelov’s appeals against Budanov’s parole have been essentially ignored by the Russian courts.