The impression of the testimony of Defendant 2
The testimony of defendant 2 also left a clearly unreliable impression, and the main impression that emerged from his testimony was that of a manipulative person, who does not shy away from lies and is very focused on himself, in the way in which he intensifies the "injustices" that he believes were done to him by the investigation team, and on the other hand reduces and finds it difficult to understand the seriousness of his actions and his responsibility, even according to his new version, for causing the death of a person on a trivial basis. The impression that Defendant 2 is self-centered, manipulative and accustomed to receiving what he wants, also arose from watching and listening to the documentation of his interrogations with the police, as described above, as well as from his conduct at the hearing held on 16 July 2019, at which his testimony was supposed to be heard. At the aforementioned hearing, defendant 2 asked to postpone his testimony due to an incident he had undergone in prison, and despite a number of decisions in which his request was rejected, after we got the impression that he was capable of testifying and after we instructed him to at least begin his testimony, defendant 2 persisted in his refusal, tried to argue and bargain with the court at length, and after his request was not answered and the significance of refraining from testifying was even explained to him, he waived his right to testify under protest (pp. 425-444). The problem is that in the subsequent hearing, defendant 2 asked to be allowed to testify, and in the end his request was granted, so that in practice he dictated the rejection of his testimony as he had decided to do in the first place (see decision of October 28, 2019).
Throughout his testimony, it was evident that although Defendant 2 gave a version similar to Defendant 1's suppressed version, he had great difficulty telling about his part in the incident and taking responsibility for his actions (even according to the new version), and attributed most of the story and details of the incident to Defendant 1, as if he himself had nothing to do with the incident or was a kind of "statistician" who was dragged after Defendant 1 with no other choice; and already at an early stage of the testimony we remarked to him that he should also relate to his actions and thoughts, and not only to the actions of Defendant 1 (p. 458-459). In this context, it should be noted that in describing his new version of the assault on the deceased, Defendant 2 remembered well to describe the part of Defendant 1 who "took off a few kappahs for him", but regarding himself he said that he did not remember whether he touched him at all (p. 457, paras. 4-5); Later, to the court's question as to how he remembers everything that Defendant 1 did but does not remember what he did, He replied no to the matter and insisted that he did not remember (p. 469, paras. 10-20).