The acquittal of a Russian who pushed someone else’s child from a swing has been overturned

The Supreme Court of the Russian Federation overturned the acquittal of a father who pushed someone else’s girl off a swing after his daughter fell, as indicated in the ruling of the judicial panel for criminal cases.

The conflict occurred on a playground in Naberezhnye Chelny. After his daughter fell from the swing, the father managed to catch her and she was not injured. The second girl, seeing this, came down from the swing and turned to her father to find out if everything was okay. However, the man forced the child to sit back on the swing and hit it hard. The child fell and suffered abrasions.

The court of first instance found the father guilty under the article “Committing violent acts with hooligan motives” and sentenced the man to 4 months of suspended correctional labor.

On appeal, the verdict was upheld. The cassation court overturned it and recognized the accused’s right to rehabilitation. The court considered that there is a crime under this article only if it was committed out of hooligan motives. The accused insisted that he did not have a hooligan motive, but committed his actions out of hostility towards the child, considering him guilty of the fall of his daughter.

After this, the prosecutor appealed to the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation and demanded that the acquittal be revoked. The prosecutor’s office states that the man, “failing to ensure the safety of his daughter during the game… replaced caring for her with a demonstrative public reprisal of someone else’s child.”

The prosecutor’s protest also stated that the “reason for committing the crime” was simply “the very fact that the victim was on the other side of the swing when his daughter was falling” and that the girl “herself, showing participation and care, came up to him to inquire about her condition.”

The Supreme Court overturned the acquittal and upheld the previous conviction.

The ruling states that the cassation submission correctly noted that “the behavior of the minor victim did not go beyond playtime, and the fall of the convict’s daughter from the swing was due to parental oversight.”