Last update - 00:00 08/07/2007
State actually holds the upper hand
By Nir Hasson
Most Israelis believe the judicial system is a battleground between suspects, who enlist the best lawyers to represent them, and the state, which resorts to battling them with its hands firmly bound with red tape.
Those who accept this assessment believe repeated offenders slip through the system's loopholes to avoid punishment. This leaves the public feeling exposed to a surging wave of crime, with the state unable to protect its citizens. This, in turn, leads to increasing support for more heavy-handed sentencing to the point of compromising defendants' rights.
In reality, however, the situation is the opposite. Defendants are usually the underdogs, with over one-third receiving no legal representation by an attorney. The number of defendants who do not receive representation is growing particularly in peripheral towns, where their chances of securing an acquittal are virtually nonexistent. Moreover, if defendants lose the fight to prove their innocence, the courts view their efforts as a waste of the court's time, resulting in heavier sentences.
Sentences are also becoming increasingly stringent. Judges cite public demand and the "surging crime rates." Haaretz, meanwhile, has found that 99.8 percent of all defendants are convicted, although the data include suspects who admit to crimes through plea bargains.
In this respect, conviction data reflect a warped image of the current state of affairs. A good example is the case of former president Moshe Katsav.
Last week, Katsav accepted a plea bargain offered by Attorney General Menachem Mazuz. Katsav, who had been suspected of multiple instances of rape, was offered to admit to a reduced indictment for indecent assault. The plea bargain is set to be brought before a judge, and will constitute a conviction. However, most of the original charges against Katsav were dropped by the attorney general's office.
But there is other evidence concerning the court system's heavy-handed approach to sentencing, and can be found at the country's prison facilities, which are becoming increasingly crowded. Between 1997 and 2007, the number of prisoners serving sentences for criminal offenses has grown by 40 percent.
The Justice Ministry's deputy chief public defender, Dr. Yoav Sapir, said that the difference between the reality of the courts' sentencing policy and the way it is perceived by the public is a result of class differences.
In an article regarding the tendency to infringe on defendants' rights, Sapir wrote that there is a large socio-economic gap between the judicial establishment (and possibly the media) and the defendants who appear before them.
"The vast majority of people who appear before the criminal justice system hail from the lower rungs of society," Sapir wrote. "They are impoverished, many of them come from minority groups, some of them are mentally ill and drug addicts. Decision-makers, by contrast, belong to a different reality," he concludes.