Eastern Uusimaa District Court has sentenced two Swedish brothers to 15 years in prison each on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and a number of other crimes.
The verdict is the highest that a court in Finland can impose.
Thirty years old Richard Nicholas Granholm, who has dual Finnish-Swedish citizenship, was convicted by the court of charges of gun crime, aggravated robbery, 11 counts of attempted murder, violent resistance to arrest, two counts of attempted aggravated assault and eight counts of ruthless threats.
His younger siblings Raymond Anthony Granholm was convicted of gun crime, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, violent resistance to arrest, nine counts of attempted murder, two counts of aggravated attempted assault, eight counts of reckless threats and one charge of posing a serious danger to road safety.
The court found no evidence to suggest that the men did not understand the nature of their actions and therefore found that there was no reason to order the psychiatric evaluations requested by the prosecution.
The prosecutor had also demanded a 13-year sentence for the brothers, with the convictions combined so that the men would each serve the entire prison sentence.
Defense: No intention to kill
In defense, the men in court claimed that they did not intend to kill law enforcement officers when they lured them into an ambush in an industrial area in the city of Porvoo on August 25, 2019.
Instead, they said their motive was simply to deprive the police patrol of their weapons, and the brothers’ defense team therefore argued that the Porvoo shot should be treated by the court as a serious attack.
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However, the court ruled that the definition of intent under Finnish criminal law does not require that the perpetrators intentionally intended to kill. Intentionality can also mean that the perpetrator is aware that another person’s death may be a possible consequence of their actions.
After the shooting in Porvoo, the violent course of events continued in the south central Tampere region, where the two men fired a number of shots at the police during a hot hunt – three police cars were injured but no injuries were reported.
The judgment in the case is not final and can be appealed.
Source: sn.dk