Criminal Case (Be’er Sheva) 29984-08-16 State of Israel v. Muhammad Zoabi - part 20

"On the day of the reading of his trial for the offenses of the outburst, the appellant sent a note to the police prosecutor, in which he wrote that he could help solve the murder of the deceased and specified the date of the murder and asked in return to draw up a "state-witness agreement" with him.  He repeatedly raised this issue on his own initiative in the continuation of his investigations.  As a rule, where the interrogee initiates negotiations for the signing of a " state-witness agreement" - as opposed to where the initiative comes from the investigating authorities - there is no impediment to using the words said by the interrogee against him in his trial (Criminal Appeal 157/87 Sabichi v.  State of Israel [3]; Miscellaneous Criminal Applications 48/1197 Moshe v.  State of Israel [4], at p.  822; Kedmi in his aforementioned book (vol.  1) [28], p.  78).  The underlying assumption of the rule is that the suspect initiating the negotiations does not provide the incriminating information as a result of a promise made by the investigating authorities, and his initiative indicates that he has taken upon himself the risk that the matter will be used against him (Criminal Appeal 175/80 Smila v.  State of Israel [5], at p.  25; Criminal Appeal 6366/98, supra [2], paragraph 7).  This rule is not absolute, and there may be circumstances in which even though it was the interrogee who took the initiative, it is still possible that later on he was given promises or his free will was denied.  In any event, in our case, the matter was indeed communicated by the appellant of free and good will, and therefore the said rule can be applied to the case at hand.  Even those who maintain that sweeping confidentiality should be imposed on statements made during negotiations prior to a state-witness agreement, qualify this rule when the statements were made of the interrogee's free will (Criminal Case (Tel Aviv) 277/87, supra [27], at pp.  166-167).  In our case, the appellant's claim that he intended to provide the investigators with false information that he claimed could be used against him in the course of the conversations that took place in connection with his request to serve as a state witness, all the more so when he was not promised anything during the interrogation, and when his good and free will was preserved.  Therefore, I am of the opinion that in law the appellant's statements were accepted as admissible evidence."