A court near Moscow on Tuesday heard an appeal from Brittney Griner, the American basketball star who was sentenced to nine years in prison for attempting to smuggle a small amount of hash oil into Russia.
A decision is expected later Tuesday after the hearing, said Maria Blagovolina and Aleksandr Boikov, lawyers for Ms Griner, who is being held in Russia. The court can either leave the verdict as it is, reduce the prison sentence, or overrule it and send it back to the lower court, they said.
The appeal will be heard by a panel of three judges in a court in Krasnogorsk, a city outside Moscow. If the appeals court does not overturn the sentence, it will come into effect and Ms. Griner will be sent to a penal colony.
On the eve of the hearing, which began Tuesday afternoon, Ms Griner’s attorneys said in a statement that she did not expect “any miracles to happen.”
The fate of Ms Griner – who was arrested on drug charges at a Moscow airport days before Russia invaded Ukraine – has been intertwined with a confrontational tug of war between Moscow and Washington.
Ms Griner – who her lawyers said was “very nervous” about the hearing – is not appearing in court and is participating in the proceedings via video link from the detention center where she has been held since her arrest in February.
“Brittney is a very strong person and has the character of a champion,” the attorneys said in their statement. “She has her ups and downs of course as she is severely stressed from being away from loved ones for over eight months.”
Ms. Griner was arrested on February 17 at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport, where she had arrived from the United States. She was on her way to Yekaterinburg, a Russian city near the Ural Mountains, where she played for a women’s basketball team. Customs officials in Moscow said they found two vape cartridges containing hash oil in her luggage and arrested her.
Ms Griner admitted her guilt in court but insisted she had no intention of breaking the law, saying the small amount of hash oil turned up in her luggage due to negligence. She told the court she made “an honest mistake”.
Since her conviction in August, her lawyers have argued that the nine-year sentence — close to the 10-year maximum for such a conviction — was too harsh for a first-time offense and was politically motivated.
American officials have accused Russia of using Ms. Griner and other Americans in Russian custody as a bargaining chip. In July, the Biden administration offered a prisoner swap involving Ms Griner, but Russian officials said it was premature to discuss a settlement while her case is pending.
President Biden has said there has been no movement with Russian President Vladimir V. Putin regarding Ms. Griner’s case. He also told CNN that he would only speak to Mr Putin at a Group of 20 meeting to be held in Bali, Indonesia next month to discuss their situation.
Bill Richardson, the former New Mexico governor and ambassador to the United Nations who has unofficially negotiated with Russian officials as a private citizen, said in October he was “cautiously optimistic” Ms Griner could be swapped out along with Paul Whelan, who previously served time in a Russian prison at the end of the year.
Ms. Griner’s lawyers said she was allowed to go outside once a day in a small yard of her detention center. She spends the rest of her time in a small cell with two cellmates, sitting and sleeping on a specially lengthened bed to accommodate her 6ft 9 frame.