Police even use the same terms around the country. An 'elephant' is when the accused has to put on a gas mask and breathe tear gas. A 'crucifixion' is when he is cuffed to a metal bed with electrical current coursing through it. In this star-chamber legal system, virtually everyone is convicted. That means the documents are filtered by a secretary, who knows that acquittals generally need to be overturned and convictions do not.
Legal expertise is also in short supply on the Russian bench.
Most new judges are court clerks who are permitted to try cases after completing a correspondence course at the master's degree level. A 1996 study by the World Bank concluded that many Russian judges were woefully undertrained. Since then, say critics, things have gotten worse, and judicial rulings usually read as though they were written by a semiliterate person. Judge Pashin, who has a Ph.D. in law, was thrown off the bench last month by a judges' board for allegedly giving out his office telephone number during a radio interview. Our jurists have the concept of justice upside down.