The appropriate punishment area - In the accuser's opinion, the appropriate punishment range for the offenses committed by Fischer in the Hassan case should be, in light of all the considerations detailed, 16 to 36 months in prison to be served in practice, along with an accompanying punishment of suspended imprisonment and a fine. Counsel for the accuser reiterated that if it were not for the uniqueness of the present case, the compound should have been significantly higher.
- It is accepted by the accuser that the present case justifies a sentence Includes Due to the two events, with some overlap, although not completely, between the appropriate complexes for each event. In this way, the appropriate punishment for Fischer will give expression to the circumstances unrelated to the commission of the offense and the various protected values that were harmed in each incident.
In addition, it is accepted by the accuser that it is appropriate to place the appropriate punishment for Fisher for the two incidents, at the bottom of the appropriate punishment ranges. This location is influenced to some extent by Fischer's personal and family circumstances (that he has no criminal record; suffers from a number of chronic illnesses; about a year ago he underwent a significant cardiac event while testifying; the criminal proceedings and punishment caused and will cause serious harm to him and his family; his contribution to society as presented in the evidence for the sentence). However, the weight of these circumstances in white-collar offenses in the realm of moral integrity is quite limited. The main reason for placing the appropriate punishment at the bottom of the compounds, according to the accuser, lies in considerations in the field of protection from justice, given the torture that Fisher suffered; the fact that he was required to conduct a criminal trial for ten years, in which even in its later stages core documents continued to be discovered are important for clarifying the question of guilt; Finally, the evidentiary foundation remained flawed to the point that sometimes the accuser had difficulty saying what really happened. The accuser agrees that it is necessary to give certain weight to these circumstances in sentencing the appropriate punishment to Fisher within the compounds, although in her opinion not all the responsibility for the prolongation of the proceeding lies with her. Moreover, although in normal it is necessary to elevate the location of the appropriate punishment within the compound due to considerations of deterrence of the public, the accumulation of all the aforementioned circumstances justifies, in my opinion, the accuser, to leave Fisher's punishment at the bottom of the compounds. At the same time, it was emphasized in the accuser's arguments that claims regarding protection from justice are given limited weight at the stage of sentencing the sentence, and that it is important to maintain, both on the legal and moral levels, that these arguments do not nullify or override the other considerations that need to be determined in determining the appropriate punishment, since the person accused in this proceeding is still Fischer and not the state. It is sufficient that the arguments for protection from justice were given proper expression at three different stages of the proceeding: (a) Reaching a plea bargain with Fisher and the significant amendments to the indictment as part of the settlement - at this stage there was an impact Multiple considerations of protection from justice alongside evidentiary considerations; (b) Determining the endpoints of the appropriate punishment areas – a stage in which the effect of the protection from justice is more moderate; (c) The appropriate penalty location for Fisher is at the bottom of the compounds. Since all of this has been done, there is no room for the accuser's position to further reduce the sentence, since this would be in the form of charging a double price from her, and as a result, from the public, for the difficulties that were discovered in the case.
- In summary, the accuser seeks to sentence Fischer to 18 months in prison to be served in practice, a suspended sentence, and a significant fine at the discretion of the court, in an amount that will reflect the severity of the offenses and the profit that Fischer sought to achieve.
Evidence and Fisher's Arguments for Punishment
- As part of the sentencing affair, seven witnesses testified on Fischer's behalf. Their testimonies focused on the harsh and widespread impact of the investigation, arrest, and protracted criminal process on Fisher's life and family; his public work and contribution to society; the extreme social and professional ostracism he has experienced since the beginning of the proceedings; and the efforts to rehabilitate him while conducting the proceeding.
- Michal Fischer - Fischer's wife. In her testimony, she described the destructive impact of the affair on her husband, their children, and their family life. The couple has been married for 33 years, and they have three children (ages 31, 29 and 18). At the time of their first arrest in 2014, their youngest daughter was in the second grade, and since then the daughter has grown up in the shadow of the affair for the rest of her life. Until the outbreak of the affair, Mrs. Fisher and her husband led a normal family and professional life, advanced in life and aspired to continue developing their careers – as a teacher who was promoted to management in the field of education, and her husband in the law firm he established after working for many years as a journalist and at some point turned to law school. Shortly after the affair broke out, her husband stopped working, and since then he has not returned to work for more than ten years (although he tried other fields of work).
According to Ms. Fischer, the first arrest dealt them a severe blow, but it was still nothing compared to the "tsunami" that struck them following the second arrest in 2015. Her husband was detained until the end of the proceedings for two and a half months; Later, he was transferred to detention under electronic supervision in her mother's home for an additional two and a half months; He then spent more than two years in electronic supervised detention, serving as his 24-hour supervisor. She herself has also undergone a number of lengthy interrogations. Mrs. Fischer described the great difficulty caused to her and her children as a result of the fact that while she was required to function as the sole breadwinner of the family (in view of the prohibition on her husband leaving the house, except for going out to the doctors and court hearings), she was also practically confined to the house in order to supervise him. This made it very difficult not only for her ability to ensure financial survival for the family, but also for her motherly functioning for her three children and for her appeals to their needs. The situation that was created did not even leave her with the leisure or money to take care of psychological treatment for the children. The temporary seizure proceedings that were taken against them with the second arrest caused all the couple's money and property to be blocked from them: "We don't have any money, I go to the bank, I put the card into the ATM, he swallows the card... I turn to the lawyers, I understand that there is such a thing as forfeiture and from this moment on I am a mother of three children with mortgages, with payments, with a need for food, I don't have a shekel". Their financial pressure reached the point of being unable to pay basic bills (electricity, water, telephone). The arrears in mortgage payments are still showing their signs to this day, for about a decade, and still prevent them from taking out loans. Except for her close family members (her mother and brother), no one cared for them. When her husband's conditions of release were eased and her supervision of him was lifted, she expanded the scope of her work as much as possible, skipping between five different workplaces, from morning to night.