According to the Supreme Court's ruling, the appropriate punishment range, which is the court's normative determination, must first be determined, despite the agreements reached in the plea bargain (see in this regard: Crim. Appeal 8820/14 Zohar Shachar v. State of Israel (published in Nevo, 2015; The Hassan case; Crim. Crim. 9246/12 Hamaisa v. State of Israel (published in Nevo, 2014). Crim. Crim. 5953/13 State of Israel v. Davidi (published in Nevo, 2014, hereinafter: the Davidi case). The Honorable Judge Edna Arbel discussed the matter in Crim. Crim. 3856/13 Shai Goni v. State of Israel (published in Nevo, 2014, at paragraph 12 of her judgment):
"The purpose of the amendment [113 – structuring discretion in punishment] is to establish criteria for sentencing a defendant. The amendment does not explicitly exclude, with regard to the application of these criteria, a situation in which the parties have entered into a plea bargain regarding the sentence. I am of the opinion that it does not change the legal policy that was in place on the eve of its entry into force, according to which the court is not bound by the punishment agreed upon by the parties in the framework of a plea bargain, and must examine it in accordance with the accepted standards, to which the considerations necessitated by the existence of a plea bargain are added, and even given a central place.... According to these criteria, which are currently enshrined (with various changes) in sections 40A-40V of the Penal Law, the plea bargain between the parties regarding the sentence should be examined, alongside the rule that limits the court's intervention in such an arrangement. "
However, it was emphasized that within the scope of the balancing test, considerable weight should be given to the very existence of the plea bargain (see the words of the Honorable Justice Vogelman, in paragraph 12 of his judgment in the Metzger case, and the many references in paragraph 16 of his judgment).
In the Davidi case, the Honorable Justice Yoram Danziger discussed the order of matters (in paragraph 20 of his judgment), according to which "the court must first determine the range of punishment in accordance with the provisions of the law and the sentencing policy that is customary, at the next stage, to compare it to the range of punishment agreed upon by the parties, and to the extent that the range is approved, to determine the punishment taking into account the plea bargain" (see also in this regard, Gezel Eyal, Developments in Criminal Law, ibid., at p. 150).