WNBA star Brittney Griner fears she will have to spend her entire nine-year drug possession prison sentence in Russia, her attorney there told the New York Times.
“She has not been in as good condition as I could sometimes find her in. She is not yet absolutely convinced that America will be able to take her home,” her Russian attorney, Alexandr D. Boykov told the Times on Wednesday. “She is very worried about what the price of that will be, and she is afraid that she will have to serve the whole sentence here in Russia.”
Griner was arrested Feb. 17 at a Russian airport after officials found vaping cartridges containing cannabis oil in her luggage. She was charged with smuggling narcotics, People reported.
She pleaded guilty to the charges in July and was sentenced Aug. 4 to nine years in a Russian prison, according to the report.
President Joe Biden told CNN on Tuesday that while he will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin during the G20 international summit scheduled for next month in Bali, Indonesia, to discuss the war in Ukraine, he is open to a meeting regarding Griner and bringing the basketball star home.
“I have no intention of meeting with him, but if he came to me at the G20 and said, ‘I want to talk about the release of Griner,’ I would meet with him, but that would depend,” Biden said during Tuesday’s interview with Jake Tapper. “He’s acted brutally, I think he’s committed war crimes, and so I don’t see any rationale to meet with him [regarding Ukraine] now.”
Boykov told the Times that Griner is allowed outside once a day where she walks for an hour in a small courtyard at a Moscow-area penal institution.
Boykov said Griner is due in court to have her conviction appeal heard on Oct. 25 and hopes her sentence will be reduced.
“Perhaps the verdict will somehow be changed and, perhaps, the sentence will be reduced, because the decision taken by the first court is very different from judicial practice,” he said in the Times article. “Considering all the circumstances, taking into account my client’s personality traits and her admission of guilt, such a verdict should be absolutely impossible.”
FWNBA star Breanna Stewart urged the White House to move on the case to get Griner home in a post on Twitter Tuesday.
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