How Russians rebelled against the punishment handed out to an ordinary guy, who, through no fault of his own, was involved in the fatal car crash of a big shot.

An excerpt from the NYT story: 

Mr. (Oleg) Shcherbinsky, a 36-year-old railroad worker, was sentenced to four years in a labor colony in February, convicted of negligence in the death of Mikhail S. Yevdokimov, a well-known comedian who was governor of the Altai region of Siberia until his car sideswiped Mr. Shcherbinsky's on a country road and plowed into a tree last August.

The basic facts of the accident were not in dispute: Mr. Yevdokimov's driver, going at least 90 miles an hour, tried to pass Mr. Shcherbinsky, who was on his way to a picnic with his wife, daughter and two neighbors, as he was turning left. They all survived.

The governor, his driver and bodyguard all died instantly, while his wife was badly injured.

It was the logic of the prosecution's case — argued in a closed trial — that provoked what is for today's Russia a rare outburst of public dissent: although Mr. Shcherbinsky was making a legal turn, he should have yielded because the governor's car was an official one on official business. (Mr. Shcherbinsky's lawyers argued that he had no time to react after the speeding car crested a hill.)

His conviction prompted large protests across Russia in February and again this week, as motorists deliberately jammed traffic and adorned their cars with white ribbons.

United Russia, the dominant political party loyal to President Vladimir V. Putin, seemed at first to blame Mr. Shcherbinsky for driving a car with right-side steering, which is common in that part of Russia.

But the party took note of the protests, joining a chorus of public condemnation of the verdict. So did Mr. Putin's newly created Public Chamber, a sort of shadow parliament created to advise the government on matters of public importance.

On Thursday, in what may be one of the quickest appellate reviews in Russian judicial history, an appeals court in Altai overturned the verdict and set Mr. Shcherbinsky free — after 48 days in jail.

"Whether or not there were any protests, the court should have made its decision based on the facts of the case," Mr. Shcherbinsky's lawyer, Anatoly G. Kucherena, who is also a member of the Public Chamber, said in a telephone interview from Barnaul, Altai's capital. "The point is that there was not any proof of his guilt."

Viktor V. Pokhmelkin, an independent member of Parliament and, according to the article, chairman of the Russian Drivers' Movement, issued a plea that judges simply act independently, following the law and their own consciences.

But despite Shcherbinsky's case, it's likely that any ordinary Russian seeing black limos and flashing blue lights is going to simply get out of the way and seethe.