Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar on Tuesday said that he will soon press forward with a new law to strengthen courts’ authority to invalidate evidence where the police obtained it in problematic circumstances.
Speaking at the 25th Anniversary Public Defender conference at the College of Management Academic Studies in Rishon LeZion, Sa’ar said, “Soon we will propose a law to broaden judicial discretion to invalidate evidence obtained unlawfully.”
Turning to outgoing national chief public defender Yoav Sapir, he said, “you broke very serious new ground” in protecting the rights of defendants and prisoners.”
“But there is a lot more to do…the rights of defendants and prisoners are at the heart of justice itself and for decades they have not gotten enough weight” in the face of “forces which have almost unlimited powers,” he said.
The justice minister repeated one of his mantras that he will defend the legal establishment from politicized attacks, a reference he has reserved usually for Opposition Leader Benjamin Netanyahu, but will aggressively seek to fix areas where the prosecution makes errors which harm defendants’ rights.
Sa’ar said that, “there have been wrongful convictions and recognizing this allows us to limit these mistakes from happening [in the future] and we will use the tool of seeking retrials,” in some cases where it is found that a conviction was based on questionable evidence.
Supreme Court President Esther Hayut said that in an earlier era, having a public defender’s office had been viewed as an unreachable dream.
However, after 25 years operating, she said that the dream was realized and that protecting defendants’ rights has radically improved thanks to the public defender’s office’s efforts.
Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit said he felt a special kinship with Sapir and the public defender’s office since he served as the IDF’s chief public defender before ascending to become the IDF Military Advocate General and later to his current role.
In a comical moment, he also said he was a bit jealous of Sapir that he was getting to retire from the spotlight now, whereas Mandelblit himself would need to wait another seven months until his term ends in February 2022.
The attorney-general credited Sapir and the public defender’s office with adding smart ideas to key public policy debates.
Further, he said “the attorney-general’s staff had worked shoulder to shoulder with the public defender to make reforms regarding legal procedures, evidentiary law” and embracing alternatives to punishments for certain legal violations, where possible.
Since mid-May, Hagit Lornau, who had been Sapir’s deputy, has replaced him as acting national chief public defender – until a permanent appointment is made by the new government.
Addressing the conference, Lornau said that her office has contributed greatly to the state both in the area of improving formal constitutional protections for defendants’ rights as well as in related social issues areas.
She said that many major reforms in giving defendants’ social work, legal representation and other professional support would never have happened without a public defender’s office.
Further, she said the public defender has helped highlight “the connection between poverty and crime” and helped convince the prosecution, at times, that reform was necessary despite the prosecution’s initial position that there were sufficient safety nets in place to block errors from leading to wrongful convictions.
Lornau said her office has pushed for and will continue to rally support for incorporating the American conceptual shift from being “tough on crime to being smart on crime” by using creative approaches to address certain complex sociological-criminal phenomena besides punishment.
Sapir himself recounted a case before Hayut in which a prosecutor was incredulous that the public defender – technically an office in the justice ministry – was taking an opposite view on a public policy issue from the prosecution, which is part of the same office.
He said Hayut chastised the prosecutor saying, “that is all of the beauty” of the public defender’s office.
In another story, Sapir said that when a new court was opening in Hadera, his office learned that there was no separate low-profile entrance for minor-suspects to enter.
Sapir said, “this could harm minors as they are entering. Even though it was late to make changes and logistically difficult, we got an attentive audience when we turned to the court president, and now there is a proper separate entrance for minors.”
He said he was encouraged by the 1,000 lawyers working with the public defender’s office, 900 of whom are mainly private sector lawyers, but contribute some of their time to public defender cases.
Finally, he turned to Sa’ar and said that recent justice ministers have supported his office and “I have no doubt that this connection will continue with you.”
Israel Bar Association President Avi Himi also expressed support for Sapir, Lornau and the public defender’s office.
More specifically, he said that he learned recently that defense lawyers are paid an abysmally low rate of NIS 90 to handle an identification hearing for defendants.
He said this rate must be increased and that defendants should be able to get the highest level service from public defenders and not just service from lower quality lawyers who are willing to take lower fees.