These reasons pervade, and even more so, with regard to the exercise of the prosecutor's power to file a criminal charge. Proper operation of the criminal proceedings is based on the public's trust in the prosecution authorities and on the belief that they make their decisions with equality. Filing charges in a discriminatory manner undermines the public's trust in the prosecuting authorities. This is a serious blow to the democratic regime. This difficulty is threefold: first, a discriminatory use of the power of prosecution undermines the assumptions underlying the granting of discretion to the plaintiff; Second, discrimination in the filing of charges harms the public's trust in the prosecution authorities in particular and government authorities in general, and thus erodes the bonds that bind the members of society; Third, the unequal exercise of the power of prosecution undermines the deterrent power of criminal law." (ibid., at pp. 511-512)
However, it should be remembered that a decision on whether or not to prosecute persons involved in a particular criminal affair is sometimes a complex, difficult, and deliberate decision, in which the prosecuting authorities must consider and examine various considerations, including, inter alia, the ability to prove the charges at hand, if all those involved are prosecuted. The key question in this context is what were the motives for which the prosecution chose to prosecute only some of those involved in the affair.
In the case of the High Court of Justice 6396/96 Zakin v. Mayor of Be'er Sheva, IsrSC 35(3) 289, it was held that:
"Partial enforcement is not necessarily improper enforcement... Without pretension to propose an exhaustive definition, it can be said, for the purpose of this petition, that selective enforcement that violates equality in the sense that it discriminates for the purpose of enforcement between similar persons or similar situations in order to achieve an improper goal, or on the basis of extraneous consideration or out of sheer arbitrariness..." (ibid., at pp. 204-205)