Civil Appeal 4584/10 State of Israel v. Regev

Judge Y. Amit:

Two appeals against the judgment of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa District Court (the Honorable Judge D. Gannot), in which a lawsuit was filed against the state for its negligence in investigating the sexual assault of a minor, and the plaintiff was awarded compensation in the amount of approximately NIS 1.8 million (together with attorney's fees and expenses).  The Appellant Other Municipality Requests 4584/10 It is the State of Israel (hereinafter: The country), which appeals the very fact that it is liable for damages and alternatively the amount of damage awarded in favor of the plaintiff-respondent and the appellant Other Municipality Requests 4699/10, is the plaintiff below (hereinafter and for the sake of convenience): Respondent), for his part, complained about the lack of compensation awarded to him.

Factual Background and the Sequence of Proceedings

1. The background to the appeals before us is found in the case of the sexual assault of an 11-year-old girl (hereinafter: The minor) which took place on the evening of April 18, 1999. The incident took place while the minor was walking down the street at around 8:00 P.M. on her way home from her friend's house, when a stranger approached her, gagged her mouth and dragged her to the yard of a building, where he carried out his plot against her.  I will spare the reader the difficult details, and say in a nutshell that the assailant first forced the minor to perform oral sex on him, then laid her down on her stomach and sodomized her.  During the incident, the assailant ordered the minor to close her eyes.

During her interrogation with the police, the minor provided identifying details of the assailant, including his height, body type, hair, clothes, hat he wore and sunglasses he wore at the time of the offense, even though it was late in the evening.

2. On 16 July 1999, about three months after the incident, the minor's father noticed a man in a supermarket near their place of residence who appeared to him to resemble the assailant's skull as it was assembled according to the minor's description. The minor's father called his daughter, and when she passed by the suspect – he is the respondent here – she burst into tears, saying that it might be him, and the father was forced to bring her home due to her difficult mental state.

Immediately after he brought his daughter home, the father returned to the supermarket, followed the respondent, and to his surprise he entered the exact same building in whose yard the offense was committed.  The father hurried to call the police, who arrested the respondent on the same day on suspicion of committing indecent acts and sodomy.

3. The next day, the respondent was brought to the Magistrate's Court for an extension of his detention, and with the consent of the parties, his detention was extended until July 20, 1999 (the decision of the Honorable Justice D. Reich-Shapira) (hereinafter: First Detention Extension). On July 20, 1999, the respondent was brought to court again, and his detention was extended for an additional seven days (the decision of the Honorable Justice A. Talmor), while the court referred to the investigative actions that the police had to carry out while the respondent was in detention (hereinafter: Second Detention Extension).

On July 22, 1999, the Respondent filed an appeal with the District Court against the decision of the Honorable Judge Talmor.  The court (the Honorable Judge A. Kaplan-Hagler) ordered the state to expedite the processing of the forensic examinations, and partially accepted the appeal, in the sense that the respondent's detention was extended until July 26, 1999 at 10:00 a.m., unless a different decision is made by a judge on duty to whom the respondent is brought in.

4. On July 25, 1999, the State's representative filed a plaintiff's statement according to Section 17(d) of the Criminal Procedure Law (Enforcement Powers - Arrests), 5756-1996 (hereinafter: The Arrests Law), according to which the state intends to file an indictment against the respondent and request his detention until the end of the proceedings against him.

The next day, a hearing was held in the Magistrate's Court, at the end of which the court (the Honorable Judge H. Groves) ordered the extension of the respondent's detention for an additional five days (hereinafter: Third Detention Extension).

5. On July 30, 1999, an indictment was filed in the District Court against the respondent, and at the same time a motion was filed to detain him until the end of the proceedings. At the court hearing, the respondent's counsel at the time requested an adjournment for the purpose of photographing the file and studying the material, and with her consent, the court (the Honorable Judge R. Meshal (Shoham)) ordered the extension of the respondent's detention until a different decision was made.

On August 10, 1999, the hearing of the request for the respondent's detention until the end of the proceedings was resumed, during which the respondent's counsel claimed that another person was arrested who was suitable for the cluster that had been assembled according to the description of the minor.  Against the background of the aforesaid, and in light of the defense attorney's request that an identification order be made, the court (the Honorable Justice B. Ophir-Tom) ordered the adjournment of the hearing to August 15, 1999.