Latvia upholds 23-year and 20-year sentences for Justīne’s murder

Latvia’s Supreme Court has upheld prison sentences of 23 years for seven-year-old Justīne Reinikova’s father and 20 years for her stepmother, LSM reported.

The Supreme Court’s Criminal Cases Department reviewed cassation appeals submitted by the defendants and the stepmother’s defence lawyer but declined to initiate cassation proceedings. It found that the lower courts’ conclusions about the defendants’ actions and the legal classification of the crime were justified.

The Latgale District Court convicted both defendants on January 28, 2025, initially sentencing the father to 20 years in prison and the stepmother to 17 years. Following a prosecution appeal seeking harsher sentences, the Latgale Regional Court increased the terms to 23 and 20 years respectively on October 30, 2025.

The defendants were charged with murder committed as part of a group while knowing that the child was helpless, as well as cruel and violent treatment of a minor that caused physical and psychological suffering.

The Supreme Court said the defendants had knowingly participated together in taking the child’s life, and that there was an indirect intent regarding her death and a causal link between their combined actions and the outcome. It said it was not decisive whether the injuries inflicted separately by each defendant would have caused death on their own; the causal link had to be assessed between the co-perpetrators’ combined actions and the consequences.