The Kyiv District Court of Odesa has been unable to hold a preliminary hearing for a month in the criminal case against doctors Vitaliy Rusakov and Maryna Belotserkovska of the Odesa private clinic Odrex, who are accused of improper performance of professional duties that could have caused grave consequences, specifically leading to the death of businessman Adnan Kivan. One of the defense attorneys failed to appear at the hearing once again, and the hearing was postponed until June 25, UNN reports.
"Once again, we have received a request to postpone the court session from Belotserkovska's defense attorney, again citing that she is on sick leave. The court offered to conduct the session via video conference; however, the individual declined,"
According to him, the lawyer informed the court that attorney Yulia Duz's sick leave ends on June 23.
"Defendant, if your counsel does not wish to participate in the court session directly on the court premises, she has the opportunity to join—and her sick leave will already be closed by then—on June 25 she has the opportunity to join via video conference to conduct the court session... We have been postponing for a month now, and the defense counsel cannot join us via video conference,"
To ensure the defendants' right to a defense, the court postponed the preliminary hearing until 2:00 PM on June 25. It is worth noting that the purpose of a preliminary hearing is to schedule the indictments for a hearing on the merits, as well as to determine the order for examining evidence and hearing witnesses from both parties.
It is worth noting that the behavior of the defense attorneys for the accused doctors bears all the hallmarks of intentional delay of the trial in order to close the criminal proceedings due to the expiration of the statute of limitations. According to experts, lawyers resort to such tactics when they lack a sufficiently substantiated position to defend the interests of the accused in court.
As a reminder,
Adnan Kivan was undergoing treatment at the Odrex clinic. As UNN previously reported, surgeon Vitaliy Rusakov likely failed to prescribe antibiotics to the patient after surgery, which contributed to the development of sepsis. Furthermore, the doctors failed to respond to the infection in a timely manner; on the contrary, on the day of the patient's death, they assured his relatives that he did not have sepsis. The patient died in the hospital. Later, Rusakov tried to convince the court that he was not Adnan Kivan's assigned physician.