QUEENS — A federal judge upheld the murder conviction of Mazoltuv Borukhova, a Forest Hills doctor found guilty of hiring a hit man to kill her estranged husband execution-style at a neighborhood playground in 2007 in front of their daughter, the Queens District Attorney’s office said Friday.
Brooklyn Federal Judge John Gleeson rejected Borukhova’s habeas corpus plea for her conviction to be thrown out because he said she had a fair trial and that “the evidence in support of Borukhova’s guilt in this case was overwhelming.”
Borukhova, 41, is currently serving life in prison without parole in 2009, after being convicted of hiring her cousin, Mikhail Mallayev, 58, to kill her husband, Daniel Malakov, a dentist, for about $20,000.
Mallayev was also convicted and is serving a life sentence.
The doctor hatched the plot to kill he husband after Malakov won custody of their daughter, Michelle, during a bitter divorce. The murder took place on Oct. 28, 2007 at Annadale playground where he and the four-year-old child were supposed to meet Borukhova.
According to Queens District Attorney Richard Brown, Borukhova and Mallayev had about 90 telephone conversations in the weeks prior to the murder, during which they agreed that Mallayev would kill Malakov in exchange for money.
Following the murder, prosecutors said Borukhova and Mallayev had two more telephone conversations. They then met at Borukhova’s Forest Hills medical office. On November 8, 2007, Mallayev deposited a total of $19,800 into ten different bank accounts.
Borukhova claimed that a number of errors were made during her trial, including various statements being improperly admitted into evidence.
But Judge Gleeson determined that any errors in the case were harmless and did not deprive Borukhova of a fair trial.
“This was a terribly sad case in which the defendant was found to have conspired and carried out a murder-for-hire plot to assassinate her estranged husband in full view of the couple’s then-four-year-old child,” said Brown in a statement. “Hopefully, this decision will bring a measure of closure to Dr. Malakov’s family.”
