LONDON — Leading figures in Russian artistic and intellectual circles have expressed shock and dismay after a theater director and playwright were jailed for six years on charges of “justifying terrorism.”

Monday’s verdict by a Moscow court against director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, who maintained their innocence, had been all but certain as acquittal rates for serious crimes are near zero in Russia.

The pair were arrested in May last year for staging Finist, the Brave Falcon, a play that borrowed elements from a classic fairy tale to tell the story of Russian women who are lured to Syria and marry Islamic State (ISIS) fighters.

Their conviction is widely seen as the first occasion in modern Russia that artists have gone to jail solely for their art rather than for an explicitly political stance.

Russian opposition figures said the court ruling represents a widening of a Kremlin crackdown on free expression and shows no one is safe from criminal prosecution.

“The criminal case against Yevgenia Berkovich and Svetlana Petriychuk will go down in Russian history as one of the most shameful and disgraceful,” opposition politician Lev Shlosberg wrote on Telegram.

The pair’s conviction, he said, was “a reminder of the complete defenselessness of art in a state without rights.”

Asked by reporters about the court ruling, the Kremlin declined to comment.

Defense lawyer Kseniya Karpinskaya said she would appeal the guilty verdict and sentence following a six-week trial, but that she had “little hope.”

CULTURAL FIGURES FLEE ABROAD
Russian arts have been drained of much of their creative talent since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, after which many top writers, musicians, and directors fled abroad.

Artists and human rights defenders inside and outside Russia have organized an open letter in support of Ms. Berkovich, 39, and Ms. Petriychuk, 44, that has garnered more than 16,000 signatures.

Supporters point out the irony that a play that won two of Russia’s top theater prizes at a festival supported, in part, by the culture ministry, is under fire from its justice system.

“They didn’t do anything wrong,” exiled Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov said at the Cannes Film festival in May. “They just staged a play that won a national theater award.”

Prosecutor Yekaterina Denisova argued that the women displayed positive opinions of ISIS and that the play did not sufficiently denounce radical Islamist ideologies.

Ms. Berkovich and Ms. Petriychuk said that while they had nothing against Islam, they were not Muslims and the play, whose main character is jailed for terrorism on her return to Russia, clearly condemned extremism.

“I staged the performance to prevent terrorism,” Ms. Berkovich told the court at the start of the trial. She said she had “nothing but condemnation and disgust” for terrorists.

Weeks before the trial, Ms. Berkovich and Ms. Petriychuk were added to Russia’s official list of “terrorists and extremists,” joining thousands of people and entities similarly designated in a crackdown on perceived subversive activity that intensified after the invasion of Ukraine.

Authorities launched the case after a pro-Kremlin theater actor — later a witness for the prosecution — denounced a staging of Finist, the Brave Falcon in his home city, Nizhny Novgorod, in social media posts.

The man, Vladimir Karpuk, said it was inappropriate to put on a play by an anti-war playwright following a Ukrainian attack on a bridge linking Russia and annexed Crimea.

Prominent journalist Ksenia Sobchak said it was a “disgrace” to Russia’s justice system to jail artists whose work “in fact exposes this terrorism rather than justifies it.”

“I am simply speechless,” she said. — Reuters

SANTA FE, New Mexico — The inner workings of a Colt .45 “Peacemaker” revolver, a symbol of the American Wild West, have become the focus of Alec Baldwin’s trial for the 2021 fatal shooting of Rust cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on a New Mexico movie set.

Jury selection was set to begin on Tuesday nearly three years after Mr. Baldwin was directed to point his gun at Ms. Hutchins as she set up a camera shot inside a movie-set church about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe.

Ms. Hutchin’s 2021 death was Hollywood’s first on-set shooting fatality in three decades and momentarily sparked calls to end the widespread use of real firearms on movie sets.

Ms. Baldwin’s involuntary manslaughter trial in a modern, brown-stucco courthouse in downtown Santa Fe is expected to last eight days and run to July 19.

It is remarkable in that there is little or no precedent in US history for an actor to face criminal prosecution for an on-set shooting death. The 30 Rock actor could be imprisoned for up to 18 months if found guilty.

In March, Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez, the set employee in charge of firearm safety, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter by a Santa Fe, New Mexico, jury for mistakenly loading a live round into Mr. Baldwin’s gun. Ms. Gutierrez received the maximum 18-month sentence.

Legal analysts and firearms specialists had long expected Mr. Baldwin’s case to hinge on whether he should have inspected the gun after he was told it was “cold,” an industry term meaning it was empty or contained inert, dummy rounds.

But in a pivotal interview in December 2021, Mr. Baldwin told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos he did not pull the trigger, sending prosecutors and defense lawyers into the world of forensic firearms testing.

Mr. Baldwin, 66, said he cocked the reproduction 1873 Single Action Army pistol before it fired a live round that killed the rising-star cinematographer and wounded director Joel Souza.

Santa Fe police set out to test Mr. Baldwin’s claims. An FBI examination found the gun was worked normally and would not fire at full cock without the trigger pulled. State prosecutors filed charges thereafter, alleging Mr. Baldwin was lying about the trigger.

Mr. Baldwin’s legal team last year countered with photographic evidence the Italian-made Pietta gun’s full-cock notch had been filed down, making it easier to fire. That allowed a mechanical failure or “accidental discharge” without a trigger pull, they said.

UPHILL BATTLE
Whether the revolver was modified or not, legal experts see an uphill battle for the prosecution to prove Mr. Baldwin knew he could kill Ms. Hutchins but showed willful disregard to the risk — a level of criminal negligence required for an involuntary manslaughter conviction.

“The gun is probably the best defense, because there is no way to definitively say what the condition of the firearm was,” said gun historian Ashley Hlebinsky who is executive director of the University of Wyoming Firearms Research Center.

Prosecutors last year dropped charges, convinced the gun was modified, only to have a grand jury reinstate them in January after independent firearms expert Lucien Haag confirmed findings of the FBI examination.

The FBI destroyed the gun during testing and the actor’s lawyers said they were left with no way to prove it was modified.

“The worst evidence against Baldwin is the FBI ballistics report that says he pulled the trigger, and his ABC interview where he said he didn’t,” said Neama Rahmani, a Los Angeles trial attorney and former federal prosecutor.

Another possible hurdle for the prosecution is persuading jurors Mr. Baldwin is guilty of criminal negligence after Ms. Gutierrez and first assistant director Dave Halls were convicted for the shooting. Halls accepted blame in a plea deal, acknowledging he did not check rounds in Mr. Baldwin’s gun. He was convicted on a misdemeanor charge and given a six-month suspended sentence.

“Juries have difficulty with the idea that people can share guilt,” said University of New Mexico law professor Joshua Kastenburg, a former lawyer and judge in the US Air Force.

Still, jurors may not buy Mr. Baldwin’s argument that, as an actor, he was not responsible for firearms safety and relied on set experts like Ms. Gutierrez and Mr. Halls.

Gun ownership is common in the Southwest United States where there is a cultural norm to check a weapon and never point it at someone and pull the trigger, according to Hlebinsky.

Then there is Mr. Baldwin’s on-set behavior.

Using videos and photos from Rust filming, state prosecutor Morrissey will try to show Mr. Baldwin was a man with “no control of his emotions,” whose “off script” firing of guns and pointing them at crew contributed to a collapse in firearms safety, according to court filings.

The two other most powerful people on the set, Souza and Halls, are likely to defend the actor. Both have been called as witnesses by the defense and prosecution, respectively.

During Ms. Gutierrez’s trial, Mr. Souza and Mr. Halls dismissed Mr. Baldwin’s on-set antics as typical of high-powered actors.

Mr. Baldwin’s best defense may be doubts his lawyers can sow about the workings of the pistol, according to Hlebinsky.

“I don’t think anyone can say 100% what happened,” said the firearms historian, who has acted as an expert in court cases on single action Colt. 45 type revolvers similar to Mr. Baldwin’s. — Reuters