'This won't be over until my feet are back on American soil': Inside American Gaylen Grandstaff's 2-year odyssey in Russian prison on apparently trumped-up drug charges.
Grandstaff, a 52-year-old a former firefighter from Texas, had been living for the past seven years in Moscow with his Russian wife, Anna. The couple taught English and lived quietly in a small apartment in a traffic-choked northern neighborhood.
From that moment, he was in the hands of the Russian criminal justice system, kept in Moscow jails for almost two years while on trial. The charge against him carried a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. Inherited from the Soviet Union, where the state's actions were treated as infallible, Russia has an almost 100% conviction rate. In 2018, only 0.43% of cases ended with acquittal, according to an analysis by Proekt.media of statistics from Russia's Supreme Court. It's a product of a judicial system where power lies overwhelmingly with prosecutors, where manufacturing evidence is routine, where defendants are presumed guilty.
Because of its closeness to GHB and its own narcotic effects, in the U.S. and many other countries GBL is a controlled substance -- in Russia it's banned. "I had no idea that conditions could be like that. Not today," Grandstaff said."You see these kinds of things in movies -- you see Russian prisons as these dark, dank places that are you know like a dungeon. That's a very good way to describe much of what I saw."
Anna's life meanwhile was taken up with tasks to make Gaylen's incarceration bearable. The two had met in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, in 2007. Four years later, they moved back to Russia to be closer to Anna's parents. Needing to paint Grandstaff as a fitness obsessive, investigators appeared to use crude tactics to do so.
Russia's interior ministry and the prosecutor's office declined to answer questions on the case. Russia's federal penitentiary service and the department tasked with prisoners' court transport did not respond to ABC News' questions about Grandstaff's treatment.There appeared to be problems with Grandstaff's version of events, though. There was no recording of his conversation with the seller and no way to show he had not known what he was buying.
Grandstaff's lawyer and other Russian legal experts said they believed the main driver in his case was likely one common to many Russian cases -- a desire to boost conviction quotas and a system that discourages any reversal once a person is charged. Prosecutors receive promotions for conviction numbers, while dropping charges is treated as a failure.
"They need a result," Grandstaff's lawyer, Anton Omelchenko, said of investigators."And the result for them is only conviction." "Any one of us can imagine ourselves becoming the main character in a crime story, and asking ourselves what will happen to me in such a situation?" Kirill Martynov, a journalist at the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta wrote afterward."The answer is depressing. False evidence, dummy witnesses, a token trial and conviction. We all know dozens of examples of such lawlessness."
The missing evidence, the judge said, meant the accusations against Grandstaff were"unconfirmed and incomplete." In light of that, she said, she was returning the case to the prosecution for further investigation.The young translator stared saucer-eyed at the judge. A choking sob came from the benches -- two of Grandstaff's friends were weeping.
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