On August 12, the court sentenced one defendant to 16 years and eight months in prison, and the other to 16 years and two months. The individuals have not been publicly named by the court.
By annulling the part of the judgment of the court of first instance regarding the prescribed punishment, it was reduced by four months, but in the rest of the part, the judgment of the Riga City Court of October 5 of last year was left unchanged. Each of the defendants will also be subject to two years of supervised probation.
The court said that the sentence for the accused has been reduced, because the court of appeal did not recognize as an aggravating circumstance what the court of first instance had recognized.
The full ruling will be available on September 17. After that, the judgment can be appealed in the cassation procedure.
Previously, the Riga city court in Pārdaugava sentenced the two men to 17 and 16 years in prison for the murder committed on March 11, 2022 in Pļavnieki, Rīga. The judgment has been appealed.
The trial court also placed both defendants under probation supervision for two years. Such punishments in the mentioned amount were requested by the state prosecutor to be imposed in court debates.
The murder took place at the grill bar "Ugolok" when two citizens of Lithuania and another person who has not been identified in the criminal proceedings drove up to the grill bar where Valagins was at that time in a "Chrysler" car. Another person, who has not been identified in the pre-trial criminal proceedings, parked an "Opel" car on the opposite side of the street in order to provide backup transport in case of need. The whole thing was captured by CCTV cameras.
Both men were charged with murder in an organized group, and carrying and transporting firearms and ammunition without a permit in an organized group.
Both defendants have previously been convicted for committing various crimes both in Lithuania and in other European Union countries.
Their victim, Valagins, also had a long history of serious criminality. He was due to be among the accused in the still-ongoing criminal case concerning the murder of the lawyer Mārtiņš Bunkus, but he himself was killed before the start of legal proceedings.
