The trial of Brittney Griner is scheduled to resume on Thursday in a courtroom outside of Moscow, where the American basketball star — now one of the world’s most famous prisoners — is facing a possible prison sentence on drug charges.
Ms. Griner pleaded guilty last week after the Russian authorities accused her of having a vape cartridge with hashish oil in her luggage at an airport near Moscow on Feb. 17. The guilty plea could potentially accelerate her case’s conclusion, clearing a path for either a deal with the United States to free her or, perhaps, a request for clemency.
But the harshest outcome — a possible 10-year sentence in a Russian penal colony — remains on the table despite the contention by Ms. Griner’s lawyers that she packed the smoking cartridges by mistake.
With legal experts saying that a guilty verdict is all but a foregone conclusion in a justice system that heavily favors the prosecution, Ms. Griner’s chances at freedom could depend on whether the Washington, despite its acrimonious relations with Moscow, can make a deal for her release.
Her best hope, experts say, is that the Biden administration carries out an exchange by releasing a Russian jailed in the United States. Russian media outlets have linked her case to Viktor Bout, a Russian arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death,” who is serving a 25-year federal sentence in Illinois for conspiring to sell weapons to people who said they planned to kill Americans.
Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken has vowed that the U.S. government will not back down until Ms. Griner and other “wrongfully detained Americans” are brought home. But her case, which has garnered the attention of many in the American sports world, has prompted criticism that Washington is not doing enough to secure her release.
The case is also bound up in issues of race, gender and sexuality. Ms. Griner is Black and openly gay, and her many supporters have worried that her chances for a fair trial are even more remote in Russia, a country where gay people face routine discrimination.
The American basketball superstar LeBron James recently appeared to criticize the U.S. government’s efforts to bring Ms. Griner home. “Now, how can she feel like America has her back?” Mr. James said in a trailer for an episode of his television show, “The Shop: Uninterrupted.” “I would be feeling like, ‘Do I even want to go back to America?’” He later clarified in a tweet on Tuesday that he “wasn’t knocking our beautiful country.”
Before Thursday’s hearing, Ms. Griner’s lawyer, Maria Blagovolina, said that her guilty plea wouldn’t affect the trial’s pace.
“The court will be looking at all evidence in any case,” said Ms. Blagovolina, a partner at Rybalkin, Gortsunyan, Dyakin, a Moscow law firm, adding: “We hope that her guilty plea would make the court more lenient.”
Asked whether Ms. Griner would be asking for clemency, Ms. Blagovolina said that for now her legal team was focused on the trial and would need to wait for the verdict before making any decisions.
Whatever the outcome of the case, the emotional cost for Ms. Griner, who has two Olympic gold medals, has been severe.
“I’m terrified I might be here forever,” Griner wrote in a recent letter to President Biden, adding, “Please don’t forget about me.”
