Crime Briefs: Oldtimers' Parole Edition
A now 75-year-old man sentenced to 15 years in prison for setting two bombs is continuing to seek parole after being denied by a lower court.
Märt Ringmaa, the so-called Lasnamäe bomber, has appealed the Harju County Court decision that found he was still a crime risk - namely, a 9 percent chance of committing a non-violent offense in the next two years, but a 14 percent chance of committing "an offense with elements of violence."
He has eight years to go in his sentence. He was tried and acquitted of involvement in a string of over 10 apparently randomly motivated bombings that went back to the 1990s and reached a peak, terrorizing the Lasnamäe district of Tallinn, in 2004 and 2005 and going back to the 1990s. He was convicted of planting two bombs that were discovered before they went off, in 2001 and 2003. He has been in prison since 2005.
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Another prisoner denied parole by a county court and seeking parole from Tallinn District Court is Oleg Pjatnitski, 53, serving a life sentence.
He had been in prison for robbery for two years in 1985 when he committed murder and rape. Sentenced to death in 1992, his sentence was commuted by President Meri to a life sentence the following year as capital punishment was being abolished. He was involved in another assault in prison in 2002 and sentenced to nine years.
His recidivism percentage is pegged at 30 percent for violent crime in the next two years and a 23-40 percent chance of a sex crime in the next five years.