Lawyer Provides Troubling Update on WNBA Star Brittney Griner

The Free Brittney movement doesn’t appear to be working.

Brittney Griner, the WNBA star star facing nine years in prison in Russia, is increasingly anxious about her chances of being freed in a prisoner swap. She’s also reportedly struggling emotionally, one of her lawyers has said.

Via NY Times:  

“She is not yet absolutely convinced that America will be able to take her home,” her lawyer Alexander Boykov told the New York Times recently.

“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 hit with a  nine-year prison sentence after she pleaded guilty to drug possession in a Russian court in August. According to her lawyer, Brittney goes outside for an hour each day in a tiny courtyard with the rest of her time spent inside a cramped cell with two other cellmates in a penal colony outside Moscow.

“It’s an old building, and made of stone,” Boykov reportedly said of her current location. “When it is hot outside, it’s too hot, and when it’s cold outside, it is too cold.”

She’s not optimistic.

“She is not yet absolutely convinced that America will be able to take her home,” Boykov said, adding that he had spoken to Griner on Tuesday. “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.”

“She has not been in as good condition as I could sometimes find her in,” Boykov reportedly said.

This week President Joe Biden said that there had been no movement with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over Griner’s case.

An appeal on her sentence is scheduled for Oct. 25.

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