I speculated about the owner’s motives earlier. With not playing in the EuroLeague due to Ukraine, maybe the loss of revenue is so much that the owner can’t afford her salary. I assume he’s off the hook paying her while she was in jail.
(She’s still in jail, but as the WNBA season has started, I assume the Russian season must be over by now.)
Maybe not… no clue. I doubt the owner gives a rip about her as a person. Probably just wants to capitalize on her abilities. If her contract has become a liability then who knows? I assume she’s one of the highest-paid players in the Russian league. I’m just not sure how the loss of the EuroLeague games affects the owner’s bottom line.
I think just possession, but the level of offense varies with the amount of cannabis. They’d been saying back in March that possession carried a sentence of up to 10 years… that part hasn’t changed.
Of course it does. But I am not terribly sympathetic to Griner’s cause if she did break Russia’s laws.
Canada and the US can’t feel too superior given our shameful detention of Meng Wanzhou for almost three years on questionable grounds. It was a politically motivated act against China during Trump’s presidency and fortunately Biden resolved it.
I am sympathetic in that 10 years is a ridiculous sentence for bringing in a quantity that I assume suggests personal use rather than trafficking.
If they’d sentenced her to 6 months and made her serve every day of that sentence then sure, fine, totally reasonable. She’d be going home next month.
Of course she still hasn’t been sentenced. I suppose it’s theoretically possible they’ll sentence her to time already served and let her go. But from what I’m reading I’m getting the sense that the sentence is more likely to be measured in years rather than months.
I don’t know as much about the Meng Wenzhou case but I figured that if Canada was on board it was probably not too bad. I certainly recall China being hopping mad about it.
Canada was not on board but had no choice under its agreement with the US: it had to detain Meng. Just wish she had been apprehended in the US as China still punishing Canada for going along with the US’ wishes.
The Russian law is what it is. The US also has some laws that I disagree with. Although I disagree with them I still respect the right of the US to impose them on anyone in their jurisdiction. If I break a US law when I am visiting there I would expect to be treated no better than an American that breaks them.
I expect Griner will eventually get traded for some Russian prisoners. All it cost China to get Meng back was two Canadians being held on spying charges.
When I was travelling through SE Asia in my younger days, the penalty for possession of small amounts of drugs was life imprisonment or even death in some of those countries (e.g. Thailand). I made sure I had no amount of drugs and never carried packages for others as I didn’t expect Canada to bail me out! I feel sorry for Griner but….
Yeah, if she’s truly guilty then she’s not wrongfully detained.
I’m curious if we should conclude anything from the state department’s classification of “wrongfully detained”.
When I went to Africa we were warned that possession of gay or child pornography was a very serious crime and even seemingly mundane family photos might be considered pornography. (This was a church trip, so it was a warning I was definitely not expecting!)
They gave examples of a child in a bathing suit or two grooms/brides kissing at their wedding as examples of stuff that could get us in trouble that we might realistically have on our phones.
It’s interesting because it will point out how important or unimportant Russia feels the recent spies are. Once they’ve been outed, I’d almost expect it to be a “the secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions” situation. Unless they’re relatives of an oligarch, I suppose.
More details that I’ve pieced together from various sources:
Max sentence is 10 years. Typical sentence is 5 years. Prosecutors asked for 9.5 years and got 9.
She was also fined 1,000,000 rubles, or about $16,400.
She was accused of (attempting to) smuggle less than one gram of cannabis oil (per CNN).
The charge was “large-scale transportation of drugs with criminal intent” (per Yahoo).
It sounds like there were numerous Russian due process violations in how her case was handled. (As in Russian police and prosecutors did not follow Russian law with regards to the rights of the accused.)
I’m assuming it’s the common stupidity in many cannabis and other drug laws. In this case it’s likely that specifically some amount less than one gram of hashish oil is considered large scale and because she’s flying into the country it triggers the transportation charge. Welcome to the world of the drug war.
The concern for Britney Griner is miniscule compared to the need to reform US drug laws and enforcement. For me, Biden gets negative points for trying to get her out of her own trouble in a foreign country, rather than doing meaningful domestic drug law reform. I think it’s kind of sad that this type of political chicanery seems to work on many voters while actually harming so many.