Caselaw

Criminal Appeal 1204/23 State of Israel v. Michael Yehuda Stettman - part 38

October 30, 2025
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There is no dispute that the aforementioned situation (hereinafter, in this paragraph): The first situation) is what represents our view at the time the judgment was written and signed in the appeal, and therefore even the very compromise proposal, its acceptance by the Respondent and its rejection by the Applicant (all according to the same perception of the circumstances), were not mentioned at all in the judgment in the appeal and did not affect what was stated therein (as my colleague, the judge, also points out).  Y.  Elronin his opinion).

On the other hand, in a situation where the Respondent retracts its request to convict the Applicant of the offenses of rape, without any stipulation (including not with regard to the Applicant's position regarding his conviction for assault), and when it does not believe that it is doing so within the framework of any agreed arrangement (hereinafter, in this paragraph): The Second Situation), the Respondent's position constitutes a dramatic development.

In this regard, it is sufficient to mention that while ignoring an agreement for the purposes of a compromise that did not go well is the norm, the use of the power of an appellate court to convict the defendant is more serious than that of which the accuser seeks to convict the defendant "Intended for exceptional and exceptional cases" (see the ruling in paragraph 27 above), which is also accepted by my colleague, the judge א' שטיין (See the reference, ibid.).

In practice, too, the number of cases in which this Court, as an appellate court, made use of the aforementioned power, is few.  The number of cases that I have been able to identify, in which such use was made when the accuser explicitly withdrew the charge, is based on a single case (and for the doubts in the context of this isolated case, see paragraph 27 of my opinion above), and a clear precedent for a situation in which the said authority was used when the respondent expressly withdrew the indictment.  On the recommendation of the court, it is doubtful that it exists at all.

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