The 1995 criminal trial of The People of the State of California v. Orenthal James Simpson, in which former NFL player O.J. Simpson was acquitted of the murders of his ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, was one of the most highly publicized criminal trials in American history. Millions of Americans followed the eight-month trial, with an estimated 95 million people viewing the TV news coverage of the police pursuit and arrest of Simpson when he failed to turn himself in at the agreed time. Most adult Americans alive at the time recall the case and it has become enshrined in popular culture as well as legal history due to both the high profile of the famous football player and his “Dream Team” of high-profile attorneys, comprised of Robert Shapiro, Johnnie Cochran, Carl Douglas, Shawn Chapman Holley, Gerald Uelmen, Robert Kardashian, Alan Dershowitz, F. Lee Bailey, Barry Scheck, Peter Neufeld, Robert Blasier, and William Thompson.
Much like the O.J. Simpson trial, the criminal trial of the former Minister of the Economy of Kazakhstan, Kuandyk Bishimbayev ignited a media firestorm in Kazakhstan and the wider Russian-speaking world. Bishimbayev, a wealthy Kazakh businessman and politician with an MBA from George Washington University and connections to the nation’s former president Nursultan Nazarbayev, was arrested in November 2023, for the murder of his wife, Sultanat Nukenova, at a restaurant he owned in the capital of Astana.
Nukenova, a glamourous 31-year-old astrologer had been married to Bishimbayev for less than a year when she was beaten to death in his restaurant, suffering brain injury, internal bleeding and with signs of strangulation. Bishimbayev’s brother testified to deleting CCTV video footage from the restaurant at the defendant’s request. However, extensive footage of him beating and abusing Nukenova on the day of her death was found on Bishimbayev’s own cell phone and played at the trial.
The trial began on March 27th, in Kazakhstan’s capital, Astana. Kazakhstan has little history of either jury trials or televised criminal trials. However, mirroring the O.J. Simpson case, the Bishimbayev trial was live-streamed on the Kazakh Supreme Court’s Youtube channel, with well over one million views of the combined daily live-streams, accompanied by a vast number of Russian-language video commentaries on Youtube and other platforms. The trial was not only unprecedented in Kazakhstan, but in the wider Russian-speaking world, it sparked significant debate, especially on the issues of domestic abuse of women. As a result of the media surrounding the trial, the President of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, signed the law “On amendments to ensure women’s rights and children’s safety”, widely referred to as “Saltanat’s Law”.
The trial’s livestream (archived on YouTube) are an interesting look into a vastly different jurisprudence than what American attorneys might be used to. The trial was conducted largely in Russian (auto-translation subtitles can be enabled on Youtube) as a legacy of Soviet control of Central Asia. However, the Kazakh rules of civil procedure allow for both Russian and Kazakh proceedings, depending on which language the case is filed in.
Oddities that American litigators would note are that the defendant spends the entire trial in a glassed-in box, wired for sound, similar in appearance to a phone booth. Also, the family of the victims are represented by attorneys in the courtroom and have an opportunity to speak. As well, the family of the defendant is allowed to speak to the court, and in fact Bishimbayev’s mother gave an impassioned plea for leniency. The judge plays a much greater role in Kazakhstan than would be the case in common-law jurisdictions. The Bishimbayev case judge took an active role in questioning witnesses, and in contrast to the formal questioning of a single witness by a single lawyer, witnesses were frequently questioned by a panel of lawyers from the prosecution, the defense, and the victim’s family.
Another somewhat unusual practice was the reading of prepared statements by the witnesses. That said, Kazakh law has embraced the adversarial system:
Section 1. General Provisions Chapter 1. Civil Procedural Legislation of the Republic of Kazakhstan
Article 15. Adversarial principle and equality of rights of the parties
1. Civil legal proceedings shall be carried out based on the adversarial principle and equality of rights of the parties. This law vests in the parties participating in the civil legal proceedings equal opportunities to defend their standpoint.
2. In the course of civil legal proceedings the parties shall choose their standpoint, ways and means for defending thereof independently and irrespective of court and other persons participating in the case.
3. The court, while maintaining objectivity and impartiality, shall manage the process, shall create the necessary conditions for the parties to exercise their procedural rights to a full and objective examination of the circumstances of the case.
Code of the Republic of Kazakhstan dated October 31, 2015 No. 377-V LRK.
Much like an American trial, expert witnesses were called and gave testimony and were cross examined.
As the trial progressed, comments from viewers on various Russian online chat groups and forums again mirrored the O.J. Simpson trial: the viewers felt that the defense attorneys were far better than the prosecution- a sort of Kazakh “Dream Team” of attorneys. Due to the history of corruption in Kazakhstan, the viewers felt that the most likely outcome of the trial was an acquittal, potentially due to Bishimbayev’s wealthy family bribing the jury.
Instead, Bishimbayev was found guilty of torture and murder, and sentenced to 24 years in prison. Bishimbayev had previously spent time in prison when he was convicted of bribery charges after serving as oil-rich Kazakhstan’s Minister of the Economy. He served less than three years on a 10-year sentence, after he was given amnesty.
The 24-year sentence was not one that could be considered lenient, even in light of the brutality of the crime. Kazakhstan abolished the death penalty in 2021, after a 17-year moratorium on executions. The death penalty was replaced with a “life” sentence of a maximum of 25 years in prison, or 30 years for cumulative offenses. Thus, Bishimbayev’s sentence (especially considering the conditions in Kazakhstan’s prisons) was quite harsh. There is a belief that the government of Kazakhstan wanted the case to send a message that oligarchs and high-status elites like Bishimbayev were not outside the law, as has always been the presumption among ordinary citizens.
The verdict has generally been met with approval, both in Kazakhstan and in Russia. The question remains whether the Bishimbayev case was a one-off, high-profile verdict, or whether it shows that the rule of law in Kazakhstan will prevail in future cases where there is less media coverage.
