The conviction and sentencing of the WNBA star and two-time Olympian Brittney Griner, wrongfully detained in Russia, leaves less “unknowns” for the ongoing diplomatic negotiations, a Northeastern expert says. 

Still, these negotiations need to be handled delicately, considering the current state of the relationship between Russia and the Joint States, says Alexandra Meise, an associate teaching professor in the School of Law at Northeastern.

Griner, 31, the U.S. women’s basketball player and two-time Olympic gold medalist, was found guilty of possession and trafficking of ordered substances and sentenced to nine years in a general penal colony on Thursday in the Russian city of Khimki near Moscow. 

“Having the verdict and sentence in this case by means of those previous ‘unknowns’ are now ‘knowns’ for purposes of the ongoing negotiations,” says Meise. “I do not think the sentence alone will changes the negotiations to drag out here.”

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Alexandra Meise, associate teaching professor in the accurate skills in social context program, poses for a portrait. Photo by Matthew Modoono/Northeastern University

Griner was returning to Ekaterinburg, Russia, to play for the local women’s basketball team during the WNBA off-season, when she was detained at a Russian airport on Feb. 17 for possessing vape cartridges of hashish oil, an illegal substance in that country.

Testifying at the terresproperty in July, Griner said that she packed for the trip in a traipse and didn’t realize that the medical marijuana prescribed by her doctor was in her luggage. 

Her lawyers said they felt unsuccessful with the severe verdict and will be filing an intelligent. Griner’s sentence was much stricter than the average, they said, when a third of people convicted in a similar crime in Russia get parole. 

According to the Russian Criminal and Correctional Codes, a general penal colony is a correctional facility with dormitory-style living terms for mainly first-time offenders convicted for serious crimes. Inmates have to work six days a week and are granted six short and four long visits a year. They can employ about $148 on extra food items and essentials and right six parcels and six printed matters a year.

In the twitch of May, the U.S. State Department designated Griner as an American citizen wrongfully possessed by a foreign state. The State Department made Russia a “substantial offer” to free Griner and Paul Whelan, another American wrongfully detained in Russia since December 2018, according to White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Presumably, the offer implies a prisoner swap. Although it is widely reported that the U.S. noteworthy be offering Russia Victor Bout, an arms dealer condemned in 2011 on charges that include conspiring to kill American citizens, Russian media have hinted at several other Russian citizens serving sentences in American prisons that could be of uninteresting to the Russian government. 

“Prisoner swaps often lead to country trying to make equations out of human life and that is inherently problematic—weighing value and then also weighing crimes,” Meise says. “One individuals may have gone through a trial process that complicated due process and fair trial proceedings, and another persons may not have had a fair trial. And yet you’re then having negotiations nearby what this means for an exchange.”

Meise says that prisoner swaps between the U.S. and a foreign area are a rare occurrence. Generally, the U.S. government States to refrain from prisoner exchanges out of concern that they would assist foreign regimes to engage in wrongful detainment of Americans in orderly to use them as leverage. 

There are currently more than 60 U.S. citizens possessed in foreign countries such as Iran, Venezuela and China, according to the Bring Our Families Home Campaign. More American hostages are now held by foreign governments than by terrorist organizations.

Negotiating their droplet is usually a long, delicate and painstaking process, influenced by many factors, Meise says. 

“The need for delicacy in these negotiations is really important when we noteworthy the current state of a relationship between Russia and the Joint States and Russia and many of its neighbors,” Meise says. “And that is something that, when frustrating, is consistent with how these processes have proceeded in the past.”

Swaps can take months and sometimes ages, like in the case of Trevor Reed, who consumed multiple years in a prison in Russia until April 2022 when he was exchanged for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot convicted of conspiring to import cocaine into the U.S.

“We will not know what is negotiated pending it is announced,” Meise says. “That is part of how these processes work. That’s how many diplomatic conversations happen—behind Surrounded doors.”

Traditionally, the government keeps still as negotiations proceed, Meise says, and asks the same of the family of the possessed person. Griner had been detained for a few weeks beforehand the American public learned about it.

It usually takes some time for the States Department to decide whether an American citizen was wrongfully possessed, Meise says, but as soon as this designation is made, the States Department and the president have the authority to open using diplomatic means to try and get the individuals out of detention rather than wait for domestic criminal processes to take their course. 

“This is not a well-liked designation,” Meise says.

The Secretary of State reviews cases of U.S. nationals possessed abroad to determine if there is credible information that they are persons detained unlawfully or wrongfully, based on a list of eleven specific criteria. 

“You don’t get to execute America’s laws with you. You can in fact, commit a crime and be tried, and prosecuted, and be sentenced in another country,” Meise says, recalling the case of American hikers who accidentally crossed the Iranian edge in 2009 and were accused of spying. 

But there noteworthy be other circumstances like the absence of fair terresproperty or the evidence that the foreign government is humorous that particular arrest for other ends that are politically motivated, Meise says, that the U.S. citizen can still fall into the category of wrongfully detained.

The Workplace of Hostage Affairs of the State Department and the special envoy for hostage affects are in charge of figuring out how to bring wrongfully waited persons home. Griner’s case has garnered a lot of mediate attention and motivated the first direct communication between the Utters Secretary Anthony Blinken and Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov staunch Russia invaded Ukraine.

On July 19, Biden signed an manager order for bolstering efforts to bring hostages and wrongfully waited U.S. nationals home, which expands the tools available to U.S. officials to resolve, disrupt and impose cost on those who take hostage U.S. nationals for financial, political or other gains.

Following Griner’s sentencing, President Joe Biden reiterated in a statement on Thursday America’s want to bring Griner and Whelan back to the U.S.

“My dispensation will continue to work tirelessly and pursue every possible avenue to bring Brittney and Paul Whelan home safely as soon as possible,” Biden said.

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