Last update - 02:31 29/06/2007
Legal analysis / An unreasonable decision
By Ze'ev Segal
The most astounding part of Attorney General Menachem Mazuz's press conference yesterday was his statement that the prosecution had enough evidence to justify indicting President Moshe Katsav on two counts of rape - a serious crime bearing a maximum sentence of 16 years in prison. If so, the plea bargain that Mazuz signed appears extremely unreasonable. Despite the significance of a conviction obtained by the president's own confession, the crimes to which Katsav will confess are not severe enough to constitute an adequate response to the evidentiary material.
A plea bargain prevents the court from convicting a defendant of offenses more serious than those included in the agreed upon indictment. However, the court has broad discretion with regard to the sentence. In Katsav's plea bargain, the sentence appears patently disproportionate - not only because it involves a suspended sentence only, but also because of the amount of compensation he agreed to pay the two complainants.
While courts usually accept plea bargains, they are not obligated to do so, and there have been cases in which a court ruled that a deal was contrary to the public interest. A few years ago, an expanded Supreme Court panel discussed the issue of plea bargains, and its conclusion was that while they should generally be approved, in order to save the courts time, a deal that contradicts the public interest should be rejected. The question of what the public interest is in Katsav's case will presumably be the focus of the trial court's discussion of this deal.
The High Court of Justice yesterday rejected a complainant's request that it order Mazuz to delay signing the plea bargain. In general, the High Court prefers to let trial courts rule on the propriety such deals. Nevertheless, this case is so exceptional that it would have justified the court's issuing a show-cause order requiring Mazuz to explain why he saw fit to agree to such minor charges, given his previous statements that he was seriously considering indicting Katsav for rape and his declaration yesterday that the evidence sufficed to support rape charges. That demands an explanation - because only evidentiary problems so serious as to make a conviction unlikely could justify failure to file rape charges in this case.
Mazuz's statement at the press conference was insufficient from both the legal and the public standpoints. And given the special nature of the case, the public deserves to hear his explanation even before the High Court does.