MOSCOW, April 22 (RAPSI) - Where lawyers are the victims, murder investigations prove fruitless more than when members of any other legal profession are victimized by the same crime, prominent attorney Henry Reznik said at Russia’s Sixth National Lawyers Convention on Monday.

Reznik, who heads the lawyers' rights commission at the Federal Chamber of Lawyers, said investigators, prosecutors and judges also fall into a high-risk group.

To contextualize the problem, Reznik referenced statistics derived from dividing the number of complaints of a crime filed by the number of such cases that led to successful convictions. 

According to this calculus, only 30% of murder investigations involving lawyer-victims successfully lead to convictions.

This is nearly half the ordinary rate for murder claims.

In the past decade, only seven out of 33 crimes leading to the deaths of lawyers have been solved, Reznik said.

The participants noted in their final resolution that the law enforcement authorities are not exerting sufficient efforts to solve these murders and urged the authorities to work harder to protect the rights of lawyers to life, health, and personal security.

Five lawyers were killed between April 2011 and April 2013, and each of these crimes was motivated by their professional activity. In addition, 19 violent crimes against lawyers have given rise to investigations over the past two years, as well as 24 attempted violent crimes.