English

Supreme Court’s ruling on appeal against death sentence for Homyel man who murdered young woman to be issued on Tuesday

 

The Belarusian Supreme Court’s ruling on a final appeal against the death sentence imposed earlier this year on a Homyel man will be issued on Tuesday, October 22, a source at the Supreme Court told BelaPAN.

The court heard the appeal on Friday.

The 25-year-old man, identified as Alyaksandr H., was sentenced to death on June 14 by a judge of the Homyel Regional Court.

The young man killed Natallya Yemyalyanchykava, a 22-year-old fourth-year student of the biology department of Homyel State University, near her home at about midnight on September 19, 2012, stabbing her 102 times with a knife.

During the trial, the man fully admitted his guilt and said that he had killed Ms. Yemyalyanchykava for her hostile attitude to him.
He said that the girl had insulted him during a party in June or July 2012, but he did not say what the insult was. According to him, on September 19, he accidentally met her while traveling on a city bus with his girlfriend. He got out of the bus one stop before her stop, ran to her apartment building and killed her when she appeared.

Neighbors heard her screams and called the police, but it was too late to save the young woman. She died from massive blood loss. The man was arrested the following day.

In his final speech, the accused asked the mother of his victim to forgive him.

The man had previously been convicted of inflicting grievous bodily harm to his stepfather, which resulted in his death.

Three death sentences have been imposed in Belarus this year. Two of them have already been upheld by the Supreme Court, including the death penalty for a 43-year-old inmate of a Mahilyow prison, who is believed to have murdered a cellmate who had lost a game of dominoes to him, with the stake being life, and the death penalty for a 23-year-old man who was found guilty of brutally murdering his wife and her alleged lover in Hrodna. //BelaPAN