Eleven years' imprisonment for manslaughter of Prof. Tikka

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The Helsinki District Court sentenced the two men accused of killing Professor Kari S. Tikka to 11 years in prison for manslaughter and aggravated robbery on Tuesday.
      Prof. Kari. S. Tikka, 61, a professor at the Department of Public Law of the University of Helsinki and a well-known Finnish tax expert, was found dead in his apartment in the Punavuori district of the capital in late May.
      The court did not regard the killing as especially brutal or cruel, while in prosecutor Harri Ilander's view, the killing was both particularly brutal and immensely painful to the victim. Ilander had called for life imprisonment for both perpetrators.
      The defendants Mika-Martti Zukov, 24, and Aleksandr Ionin, 20, pleaded guilty on charges of manslaughter.
     
The District Court found the perpetrators' account on the events believable. The men insisted that the death of the professor was unintentional.
      Moreover, it might have been true, too, that Zukov got the idea of hurting Tikka just minutes before the killing. According to the Court, there is no evidence to prove that Zukov and Ionin had agreed in advance to kill the professor.
      The pair met Tikka in a Helsinki restaurant called DTM in the small hours of a night in late May. The three then proceeded to the professor's apartment on nearby Punavuorenkatu.
      On their way there, the young men agreed that they would get Tikka drunk and then steal some of his possessions. The scheme did not go quite as planned, however, as Tikka only drank soft drinks while the young men themselves got drunk from the whisky they were consuming.
     
Zukov said he was disappointed in the failure of their plan. He therefore attempted to knock Tikka unconscious by hitting him five times over the head with a whisky bottle wrapped in a towel, after Tikka had urged them to leave. The time had by now moved on to the early morning, and Tikka was preparing to go to work.
      The younger assailant, Ionin, prevented Tikka from escaping by strangling him by the throat, while the 24-year-old hit the victim for a sixth time over the head. The professor died, while the accused remained in the apartment stealing some of his belongings.
      According to the District Court, the pair acted in tacit agreement to say the least.
      On the other hand, the court believed that the purpose of the accused was to prevent Tikka from escaping rather than to kill him.
      However, the men should have understood that such strong and brutal violence was likely to kill the victim.
     
The District Court noted that based on its precedents, the Supreme Court has sometimes regarded even very brutal and cruel homicides as manslaughters instead of murders.
      When asssessing the degree of cruelty, it is important to know whether or not the purpose was to cause pain or to delay killing in order to add more suffering.
      "On the basis of this, the Court regards the killing of Professor Tikka as manslaughter and not as murder", the Helsinki District Court argued.
     
Prosecutor Harri Ilander expressed his disappointment in the sentence, but made no immediate decision on appealing against the verdict to the Court of Appeal.
      The defence attorneys of both defendants seemed to be satisfied with the court decision.
      "The sentence is based on the legal usage, and it is correct in relation to the crime. There is no reason to appeal", commented Zukov's lawyer Heikki Lampela.
      Ionin's defence attorney Kari Korhonen also said that he was going to advise his client not to appeal against the court ruling.


Previously in HS International Edition:
  Accused admit only to manslaughter of Professor Kari Tikka (27.9.2006)

Links:
  The Supreme Court

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