Court upholds suspended sentence for prosecutor Eve Soostar

Tallinn Circuit Court has upheld a suspended prison sentence for prosecutor Eve Soostar, rejecting her appeal in a case involving a forged consent form, ERR reported.

The court left unchanged a Harju County Court ruling from June 14. Soostar was sentenced to six months in prison, but the term will not be enforced if she commits no new intentional crime during a one-year probation period.

The courts found that Soostar removed a victim’s form refusing to take part in plea-bargain proceedings from a criminal case file and replaced it with a form she had prepared stating that the victim agreed to the procedure. She attached a counterfeit consent form to a digital-signature confirmation page from the victim’s original form, then sent the case file to court.

The circuit court agreed that the forged form was used to secure the right to resolve the case through a simplified procedure, reducing the work required compared with other types of proceedings.

Soostar had also been accused of forging and using a civil claim. The county court acquitted her on those charges, finding that a civil claim did not meet the legal definition of a document. It also concluded that her conduct did not amount to an attempted offence, even though she had said she believed the civil claim was a document when she forged it.

The court found no aggravating or mitigating circumstances. Soostar must pay 1,419 euros in state fees.