Brittney Griner’s Trial Has Ended. What’s Next?
glamour.comto nine years in prison, her lawyer Maria Blagovolina on Monday. Griner was arrested for carrying a single vape cartridge containing less than a gram of hash oil.After six months in pretrial detention, the Phoenix Mercury star player was found guilty of drug possession on August 4.
Griner pled guilty in early July, but also told the court that “there was no intent,” that the vape cartridge only made its way into her luggage by accident, and that she “didn’t want to break the law.”The appeal comes shortly after it was reported that the United States is attempting to negotiate a prisoner exchange with the Russian government to secure Griner’s release.
President Biden has reportedly offered to free the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, nicknamed the Merchant of Death, in exchange for Griner and Paul Whelan, a former Marine who has been held in Russia since 2020 on “espionage” charges.
Both have been deemed wrongly imprisoned by the US State Department.While the Russian government previously dismissed talks of such a deal as “unequal,” Russian officials seemed to indicate that negotiations could result in a favorable outcome in comments reported on Saturday.
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