In Russia you are guilty till proven innocent - that goes for judges too

An orphan living under a staircase in Moscow stole a pair of trousers and two jars of jam and is now serving five years in prison. A grandmother from Novgorod, with a long history of petty theft, stole two cans her next-door neighbours had left to dry on top of a fence. She received an eight-year sentence.

An orphan living under a staircase in Moscow stole a pair of trousers and two jars of jam and is now serving five years in prison. A grandmother from Novgorod, with a long history of petty theft, stole two cans her next-door neighbours had left to dry on top of a fence. She received an eight-year sentence.

"It is a cruel system because so many people get sent to prison for such long periods for such minor offences," says Sergei Pashin, just fired as a judge from Moscow City Court for his liberal decisions, as he lists recent miscarriages of justice. He points out that "about 99.6 per cent of people brought before the courts are found guilty. And half the 0.4 per cent not guilty verdicts are reversed on appeal."

Russia has an extraordinary number of people - 1.1 million - in its crumbling jails and prison camps. Out of every 100,000 Russians some 750 are in prison compared to 120 in Britain.

A special report by the official Russian human rights body says that 85,000 prisoners have no beds, 91,000 are sick with TB and 5,000 have Aids. Mr Pashin's biggest crime in the eyes of his fellow judges was apparently that, during his four years on the bench, he often found defendants innocent. In Russia judges are traditionally biased in favour of the prosecution. As an adviser to President Yeltsin's administration in the early 1990s Mr Pashin was also the main proponent in Russia of trial by jury, which he succeeded - in the teeth of official resistance - in introducing into nine Russian regions.

None of this has done his career much good. Since he became a judge in 1996 Mr Pashin, a dapper 37-year-old who looks more like a successful businessman than a judicial reformer, has been strongly criticised by other judges. He was sacked in 1998 but the decision was reversed by the Supreme Court on appeal.

But in October the Moscow Qualification Collegium of Judges fired Mr Pashin again. Ironically he is being sacked under legislation he himself drafted for removing judges who were accused of serious crimes. His offences were twofold: He had written a paper about a conscientious objector called Dmitry Neverovsky, who was convicted of draft dodging in the Kaluga region. Mr Pashin said the court had violated procedural laws and had disregarded Neverovsky's right to do civilian service as an alternative.

His second offence was that he had taken part in a phone-in programme on Ekho Moskvy radio station when a woman called in asking desperately for help. "She said she had awful problems and had lost all hope," says Mr Pashin. "I said I could not advise her, but if she wanted to call me at my office she could do so and I gave her my telephone number over the air." Mr Pashin's colleagues decided this was "not fitting behaviour for a judge".

Mr Pashin is still an enthusiast for jury trials. He says juries are much more likely to bring in not guilty verdicts or take into account special circumstances. They also reduce the opportunities for judicial corruption. This, he says, is not as bad as in the militia or police, but if you know the right lawyer you can usually get to a judge.

"Many judges say privately that they favour jury trials because it makes them feel that they are real judges and not just a substitute for the prosecutor," says Mr Pashin. But provincial governors oppose them because it limits their power and nobody lobbies for jury trials within the government.

It is not only that the court system is biased towards the prosecution. Mr Pashin says it takes an absurdly long time for a case to come to court at all. In civil cases people trying to bring a case against one of Russia's rocky banks often have to wait so long that, even if they win, the bank has disappeared or its assets have been transferred elsewhere.

On hearing of his second dismissal in two years Mr Pashin was reluctant to appeal to the Supreme Court for the second time. "I thought I would go into teaching and scholarly work," he said. Since then he has had second thoughts and will now take his case to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.