Another auxiliary test seeks to trace a person's belonging to the "inner circle" of the commission of the offense - which characterizes the joint perpetrators - as opposed to the accomplices who are in a more external circle of the criminal plan. A person who took part in a joint decision to commit a robbery, and was even a party to its execution, belongs to the aforementioned inner circle, and bears responsibility as a joint perpetrator (see: Criminal Appeal 3390/98 Roche v. State of Israel (December 28, 1999) (hereinafter: the Roche case); the Hiro case, para. 12 of the judgment of Justice (as he was then called) S. Jubran).
In case law, the understanding has taken root that the application of a single auxiliary test for the purpose of distinguishing between a joint perpetrator and an accomplice may give rise to a difficulty (see, in this regard, Miriam Gur-Aryeh, "Forms of Committing a Criminal Offense," Criminal 1:29 (1990)). Therefore, the "combined test" is customary in this court (Rabin and Vaki, at pp. 643-644). Within the framework of the combined test, it is necessary to examine both the quality of the physical contribution of the perpetrator together, as well as the psychological element (Mercado, at para. 88 of the judgment of Justice Goldberg). The combined test was described as a parallelism of forces - the higher the mental element of the offender, the lower the level of sufficiency with regard to the factual element. In practice, the auxiliary tests of functional control and membership in the inner circle of the commission of the offense come as considerations, within the framework of the combined test.
The combined test, therefore, is a broad test, focusing on both the factual and mental elements of a person's criminal conduct. It examines his actions and intentions, and includes an examination of his control of the criminal incident, the level of his involvement in the narrow and inner circle of the participants in it, and in their joint program.