PHOTO: Khaiko Malakov, the father of murder victim Daniel Malakov. File Photo
A federal judge last week denied the petition of a writ of habeus corpus filed by the attorneys of a borough doctor who is serving life without the possibility of parole for conspiring to kill her estranged husband, a beloved dentist who was gunned down by her cousin in a Forest Hills playground in October 2007 in full view of their then 4-year-old daughter, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced.
U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson last Thursday rejected all of the claims raised by lawyers representing Dr. Mazoltuv Borukhova in her federal habeas proceeding in the Eastern District of New York.
A writ of habeas corpus, according to Cornell University Law School, is used to bring a prisoner or other detainee before the court to determine if the person’s imprisonment or detention is lawful.
Borukhova paid Mikhail Mallayev, her cousin through marriage, $19,800 to murder Dr. Daniel Malakov.
Borukhova, now 41, and Mallayev, now 58, were convicted in March 2009 of first-degree murder and second-degree conspiracy. Mallayev was also convicted of second-degree criminal possession of a weapon. The following month, Borukhova and Mallayev were sentenced to life in prison without parole on the murder conviction and a consecutive term of 8 1/3 to 25 years on the conspiracy conviction. Mallayev was also sentenced to 15 years on the weapon possession charge to run concurrent to the murder sentence.
Gleeson’s decision, Brown said, “relied heavily” on the findings of the state appellate court that affirmed Borukhova’s conviction and determined that any trial errors in the case were “harmless and did not deprive the defendant of a fair trial.” Gleeson rejected claims that evidence prosecutors presented at trial was legally insufficient to find Borukhova guilty of first-degree murder and second-degree conspiracy; that various statements were improperly admitted into evidence; and that she was prejudiced by being tried jointly with Mallayev.
According to trial testimony, Brown noted, Borukhova and Mallayev had nearly 100 telephone conversations with each other in the weeks prior to the murder, during which they came to an agreement that Mallayev would kill Malakov for money.
Borukhova arranged for Malakov to meet her on the morning of Sunday, Oct. 28, 2007, in the Annadale Playground on 64th Road so that he could deliver their daughter for a visit with her. Malakov had won custody of the child after a bitter court battle, Brown noted. Mallayev waited near the park, and utilized a makeshift silencer fashioned out of a small Clorox bleach bottle to shoot Malakov twice in the chest. After the murder, Borukhova and Mallayev had two more phone conversations which were followed by a meeting at her Forest Hills medical office. On Nov. 8, 2007, in Brooklyn, Mallayev deposited a total of $19,800 into 10 different bank accounts, Brown said.
Mallayev was arrested later that month in Georgia after NYPD detectives matched fingerprints on the makeshift silencer found at the scene to fingerprints taken from Mallayev in 1994 after he was charged with subway fare-beating.
Brown called it “a terribly sad case,” and said he hopes that “this decision will bring a measure of closure to Dr. Malakov’s family.”
By Michael V. Cusenza michael@theforumnewsgroup.com
