Tuesday, July 17, 2007

There they go again

The Israeli Supreme Court is once agin overstepping it's boundaries. The Attorney General, after reviewing all the evidence decided to reach a plea bargain with the former President Moshe Katzav. As expected, a whole host of people ran to the Supreme Court to overturn the plea bargain.

This is again, judicial tyranny. There is no legal issue here. It is solely an issue of judgement, is there enough evidence to bring Katzav to trial. The Attorney General is by law allowed to enter into a plea bargain when he believes it is the best outcome. In this case after evaluating all the evidence exhaustively he decided on a plea bargain. What is the legal issue that the Supreme Court will decide here? The Supreme Court is again going to replace the judgment of the official who is designated by law to make this decision, with their own. Why is Dorit Beinish's judgement in this matter better then Mazuz's? He obviously believes that the decision is reasonable, why should we care what the Supreme Court Justices think, that isn't their job. Their job is to interpret the law and Mazuz broke no law.

It may be that Mazuz is wrong in this case, however, it is not the Supreme Court's place to decide.

Let's think about this for a minute. The Supreme Court is now going to force the prosecution to bring an indictment and go to trial. Imagine Katzav appeals to the same Supreme Court after the trial, the same court that indicted him will now hear his appeal? Let's just get rid of the prosecution and let the judges do it all.

1 comment:

abiebaby said...

In the US plea bargains are not final until accepted by the trial court (not the Supreme Court). In the Federal system, the District Court (lowest court) Judge is not a party to the plea bargain and can reject it or accept it. But, after accepting it, can ignore the proposed sentence (a rarity) and impose any legal sentence that would not be an abuse of discretion. In NY State, the trial judge must either accept or reject the plea bargain. If the judge thinks the sentence is too lenient and rejects the deal, s/he must allow the defendant to withdraw the plea.