The verdict will be appealed to the Supreme Court.
Previously, the court of first instance initially sentenced Maris Švab and Andrej Dargil to 18 years in prison with three years of police supervision, however, taking into account the long course of the proceedings, it was decided to shorten the sentence by three years. The court sentenced both men to 15 years in prison with 2.5 years of police supervision. The first court hearing in this case took place approximately six years ago – in February 2016.
The convicts must pay moral compensation to the mother of the deceased young woman – in the amount of 80,000 euros, as well as material compensation in the amount of 20,501 euros.
The indictment states that the two defendants and the deceased woman consumed alcoholic beverages together on the day of the murder, but later an argument broke out between the company. As a result, the men grabbed the woman and threw her from the fifth floor. In the course of the criminal trial, the motives of the crime were not clarified.
The defendants pleaded not guilty to the crime. The victims initially claimed damages of more than 510,000 euros and 303,000 euros, which the defendants did not admit.
Švabe was a friend of the deceased, with whom she had a relationship, and Dragils was his acquaintance. Both men were charged according to Article 117, Clause 10 of the Criminal Law, that is, for murder, if it was committed by a group of persons. For such a crime, a person may be punished with life imprisonment or deprivation of liberty for a period of ten to 20 years and with probation supervision for a period of up to three years, with or without confiscation of property.
The mother of the deceased young woman told the LETA agency that for many years the investigation only focused on the version of suicide, even though since 2008 it was ruled out by the evidence in the case – a trasological examination, which was later confirmed by an investigative experiment with mannequins, and a polygraph examination of one of the accused persons. . The version of suicide has also been ruled out by the international expertise, which once again confirmed the conclusions of the Latvian experts about the murder in a group of persons.
LETA already reported that, disregarding the results of the polygraph or lie detector examination and other evidence that could indicate a murder, at the end of 2013, after more than five years of investigation, the State Police ended the criminal proceedings regarding the case when, under mysterious circumstances, someone from Gertrude Street in Riga a young woman fell, jumped or was thrown from the window of the fifth floor of the building.
The criminal process was terminated, because the police then admitted that the deceased Inga Vinogradova had committed suicide, however, her mother Ina Meija still expressed her belief that the woman was thrown out of the window by her spouse together with his friend. The relatives of the deceased woman appealed to the prosecutor’s office against the decision of the police to terminate the criminal proceedings. The prosecutor’s office overturned the police decision because it considered it premature and unfounded, and then the case went to court.