US’ Women’s National Basketball Association (NBA) basketball player Brittney Griner, who was detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport and later charged with illegal possession of cannabis, stands inside a defendants’ cage before a court hearing in Khimki outside Moscow, on August 4, 2022.
Evgenia Novozhenina | AFP | Getty Images
WASHINGTON — A Russian court will hear WNBA star Brittney Griner’s appeal on Tuesday after the American athlete was convicted on drug charges earlier this yr.
Griner’s lawyers told NBC News before the hearing that the two-time Olympic gold medalist is “quite pessimistic” that the judge will overrule the court’s original verdict.
“She hopes there will likely be some reduction in her sentence,” Maria Blagovolina, Griner’s lawyer, told Andrea Mitchell of NBC News, adding the 32-year-old athlete will appear in court via video conference.
Griner, who plays skilled basketball in Russia in the course of the WNBA offseason, was arrested in February after Russian authorities found vape canisters containing cannabis oil in her luggage at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.
Her lawyers said Griner only uses cannabis medically and unintentionally packed the cannabis canisters in her suitcase since the skilled athlete was in a rush.
Under Russian law, the charge carried a penalty of as much as 10 years in prison. In August, Griner was found guilty and sentenced to nine years. She was also ordered to pay 1 million rubles, roughly $16,301.
The court’s decision got here because the Biden administration scrambled to secure her release.
Per week before the decision, the Biden administration confirmed it made a proposal to the Russian government for the discharge of Griner and the previous U.S. Marine Paul Whelan.
‘I’m terrified I is likely to be here ceaselessly’
US WNBA basketball superstar Brittney Griner stands inside a defendants’ cage before a hearing on the Khimki Court, outside Moscow on July 26, 2022.
Alexander Zemlianichenko | AFP | Getty Images
Days before she pleaded guilty last month, Griner wrote a letter to President Joe Biden asking for his direct help along with her case.
“I sit here in a Russian prison, alone with my thoughts and without the protection of my wife, family, friends, Olympic jersey, or any accomplishments, I’m terrified I is likely to be here ceaselessly,” the skilled athlete wrote in a July 5 letter.
“I realize you might be coping with a lot, but please remember about me and … other American detainees. Please do all you possibly can to bring us home,” Griner wrote.
After receiving the letter, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris called the WNBA star’s wife, Cherelle Griner. Biden also wrote a response to Griner that U.S. diplomats hand-delivered in Moscow.
Biden reassured her wife that he’s working to secure Griner’s release as soon as possible, based on a White House readout of the decision. He also told Cherelle Griner that he’s working to release Whelan, who’s serving a 16-year sentence in Russia.
Whelan was arrested in 2018 on charges of acting as a spy for the USA. On the time he was arrested, Whelan was visiting Russia to attend a marriage, based on his brother, David Whelan.
Griner’s arrest and subsequent detention got here because the West issued repeated warnings to Russian President Vladimir Putin to attract down the tons of of 1000’s of troops staged along Ukraine’s border. Within the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of its ex-Soviet neighbor, the U.S. and its allies unleashed a slew of punishing sanctions on Moscow and built up a multibillion-dollar war chest for Kyiv.
Two months into the war, Russia agreed to release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed in a prisoner exchange.
Reed was accused of assaulting a Russian police officer and detained by authorities there in 2019. He was later sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison. Reed and his family have maintained his innocence, and the U.S. government described him as unjustly imprisoned.
For Reed’s release, Biden agreed to free Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the U.S.