Shai Yaniv, in his article: "Plea Bargains from the Judicial Perspective – Changes and Implications" in: Sefer Eliyahu Matza, 341, 361 (Aharon Barak, Ayala Procaccia, Sharon Hans and Raanan Giladi, eds., 2015, hereinafter: Yaniv, Plea Bargains), believes that the trend of giving increasing weight to plea bargains while giving increasing weight to the prosecuting authorities and harming the court's legal and moral responsibility for imposing the sentence, leads to a violation of the defendant's criminal rights. According to him, the bill regarding plea bargains, which is pending, only strengthens this trend even beyond what has been ruling. According to him, in light of the developments that have taken place in this context, and the dramatic increase in the rate of plea bargains in all criminal proceedings, this trend should be reexamined, or at least the rights of the defendants should be ensured in this framework.
In any event, the prevailing rule is, as I have opened this chapter, that, as a rule, plea bargains must be respected. This trend stems from seeing the advantages of plea bargains, and the concern that if most plea bargains are not respected, defendants will refrain from making plea bargains.
8.2. The Relationship between the Punishment Compound and the Plea Bargain
In the extended case of a certain person, in the appellate court, the District Court rejected a plea bargain because the punishment agreed upon by the parties was lower than the punishment that, in the court's opinion, was appropriate to the severity of the offense. The Supreme Court accepted the appeal filed by the defendant, and ruled that when the court considers whether to honor a plea bargain, it must take into account not only the compatibility between the act and the agreed punishment, but also other considerations such as the defendant's waiver of the conduct of the proceeding in light of the evidence against him, the defendant's reliance, and the considerations that led the prosecution to reach a lenient settlement, an approach called the balancing approach (for an analysis of the various approaches, see Tamir and Livni, plea bargain, ibid., at p. 62). According to this approach, the court must examine whether there is a balance between the benefit that the plea bargain grants to the defendant, and the benefit that the proposed sentence has for the public interest, taking into account the above factors.