Is the story of the shortest speech of the lawyer Koni true?

For many years, a story has been walking over the network about how a famous lawyer wittily achieved the excuse of a boy who hit his classmate with a knife. We checked the authenticity of this story.

As stated in history, once a process was passed over a gymnasium student, who hit his classmate, who for several years called him a hunchback daily. During the court, Anatoly Koni allegedly pronounced the shortest and possibly the most spectacular speech in his lawyer career. He began this: "Hello, dear jurors!" "Hello, Anatoly Fedorovich!" - answered the jury. Suddenly, the horses repeated: "Hello, dear jurors!" - And they answered already in bewilderment. This was repeated until the jury, and judges, and all those present exploded from rage, demanding to withdraw this madman from the courtroom. “And this is only 37 times,” the lawyer finished his speech, after which his client was justified.

You can read about this case as in the media ("Top secret","Tsargrad"), And in social networks - on Facebook (there are publications with 899 And 231 reposts) and VKontakte (1535 And 200). IN Instagram The story was shared by singer Vlad Topalov.

Lawyer Anatoly Koni, along with Fedor Povyako, is often mentioned as one of the two most famous pre -revolutionary lawyers in Russia. One of the main reasons for this is the numerous collections of entertaining judicial cases with his participation. In fact, Koni was a prosecutor, judge, senator, writer (in 1902 he even Put forward The Nobel Prize for the biography of the doctor Fedor Gaaz), but not a lawyer in the modern sense of the word, that is, a defender. At its most famous process (case The attempt of Vera Zasulich on the St. Petersburg mayor Trepov) Koni spoke in kind of the chairman of the city district court.

"Verified" did not find in Collected works A.F. Koni, one of the eight volumes of which is completely dedicated to court speeches, information about the justification of a certain boy with a hump. There are no them in other authoritative publications about the lawyer.

It could be assumed that the described case is an ancient unverified bike about Anatolia Koni. However, the analysis of publications shows that until recently it was not printed in the popular non -specialized literature. On Facebook, history spreads with 2012 year, in ""Live magazine"-since 2009. In the latter case, a link to publication The cultural historian Ilya Kalinin in the magazine "Unachable reserve" in 2008, and this is the earliest example, met "tested".

This bike also has a “twin sister” with other defendants. The network is popular story About how the lawyer Fyodor Pylevko defended the man who killed his wife. In the same way as in a bike about horses, Povleako allegedly brought the jury and the rest of the audience to frenzy, and then said: “Well, gentlemen, you could not withstand 15 minutes of my experiment. And what was this unfortunate man to listen to 15 years to the unjust reproach and the irritated itching of his grumpy woman for every insignificant trifle?! ” After that, his client was justified. This story also walks on blogs with the heading "The shortest speech of a Polevako lawyer."

The story of Palevako is much older than the story about Koni. In modern form, it Published And at the beginning of the zero, and in the days of the USSR Given With somewhat different details. So, in the children's story of Nisson Zeleran and Boris Larin "Bear, Seryoga and me”, Published in 1961, the defendant was a hunchback and allegedly heard from his wife a reminder of this. In a similar way, this case was described in other publications of that era. At the same time, “verified” did not find his references in authoritative publications about Fedor Povleko (collections of speeches, biography). There is no evidence that the story of Palevako, in principle, was printed before the 1917 revolution. It is also difficult to imagine that a person who committed an intentional murder will be released only because of the offensive behavior of his victim. In all likelihood, this story arose as one of the judicial jokes and has nothing to do with reality. As can be seen from the chronology, it was from it that the much later bike was born about Anatolia Koni and the hunchback student. Sometimes, however, in this variation It appears The same Povleako.

Photo on the cover: Wikimedia Commons

Not true

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