Russia put a dead lawyer on trial and convicted him in 2013, and the European court ordered Russia to pay his widow and mother

Sergei Magnitsky worked for Hermitage Capital, the investment fund run by Bill Browder. He was arrested and held for 11 months in pre-trial detention in Moscow, where he died in November 2009, aged 37, allegedly after being beaten. The United States passed the Magnitsky Act, imposing visa and financial sanctions on Russian officials accused of involvement in his death. Russia answered with a law banning adoptions of Russian orphans by Americans. Prosecutors then put the dead man on trial. His family refused to take part, and the court appointed defence lawyers against their wishes. On 11 July 2013 Moscow's Tverskoi District Court found Magnitsky guilty of tax evasion, with an empty defendant's cage in the room. Browder, tried in absentia, received nine years. On 27 August 2019 the European Court of Human Rights ruled unanimously that Russia had violated Magnitsky's right to life and his freedom from torture. It held that a trial of a dead person "runs counter to all guarantees of Article 6" and breached the presumption of innocence. It ordered Russia to pay €34,000 jointly to his widow, Nataliya Zharikova, and his mother, Nataliya Magnitskaya. Browder has since lobbied for Magnitsky sanctions laws in several countries.