Eastern Uusimaa District Court has sentenced two Swedish brothers to 15 years in prison each on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault and an array of other offences.
The sentence is the maximum that a court in Finland can impose.
Thirty-one-year-old Richard Nicholas Granholm, who holds dual Finnish-Swedish citizenship, was convicted by the court on charges of a weapons offence, aggravated robbery, 11 counts of attempted murder, violently resisting arrest, two counts of attempted aggravated assault and eight counts of reckless endangerment.
His younger sibling Raymond Anthony Granholm was convicted of a weapons offence, aggravated robbery, aggravated assault, violently resisting arrest, nine counts of attempted murder, two counts of attempted aggravated assault, eight counts of reckless endangerment and a charge of posing a serious danger to road safety.
The court found no evidence to suggest that the men did not understand the nature of their actions, and therefore ruled there was no reason to order psychiatric evaluations as had been requested by the prosecution.
The prosecutor had also demanded a 13-year sentence for the brothers, with the convictions combined so that the men would each serve the entire duration of their sentences in prison.
Defence: No intention to kill
In their defence, the men argued in court that they had not intended to kill the law enforcement officers when they lured them into an ambush at an industrial estate in the city of Porvoo on 25 August 2019.
Instead, they said their motive was only to rob the police patrol of their weapons, and the brothers’ defence team therefore argued that the Porvoo shooting should be treated by the court as an aggravated assault.
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The court ruled however that under Finnish criminal law the definition of intent does not require that the perpetrators deliberately intended to kill. Intentionality can also mean that the perpetrator is aware that the death of another person may be a possible consequence of their actions.
After the shooting in Porvoo, the violent sequence of events continued in the south-central Tampere region where the two men fired a number of shots at police during a hot pursuit — three police cars were damaged, but no injuries were reported.
The judgement in the case is not final, and is subject to appeal.
