Tal Mor with his father Itzik in court 311.
(photo credit: JOANNA PARASZCZUK)
A decade ago, then-Supreme Court justice Mishael Cheshin remarked in a
hit-and-run case that the driver’s despicable act “strikes a blow to the minimal
requisite solidarity needed to maintain a healthy society… and it is only
fitting that the driver be punished in the harshest way within the framework of
the law.”
Tragically, in June of last year Cheshin experienced first hand
the horror of the hit-and-run when his son, Shneor, 43, was run down while
cycling. Tal Mor, 27, who was under the influence of both alcohol and drugs, not
only abandoned Cheshin, leaving him to die on the side of the road, but also
attempted to cover up his heinous crime.
Though he deserved it, Mor was,
unfortunately, not “punished in the harshest way within the framework of the
law.”
A 12-year-prison sentence was handed down, along with NIS 30,000 in
compensation to the Cheshin family and the revoking of Mor’s driver’s license
for 20 years, by Judge Zacharia Caspi of the Petah Tikva Central District
Court.
“Twelve years is by no means a light sentence,”
Prof. Emmanuel Gross, an expert in criminal law from the University of
Haifa, told
The Jerusalem Post Sunday, “but the court could have been
harsher.”
Could have and should have.
The phenomenon of
hit-and-runs is a blight on our society. And the frequency with which Israelis,
brought up on the Zionist ethic of mutual responsibility and shared fate, choose
to cowardly run away from the scene of an accident is shocking.
According
to data provided by the Israel Police’s traffic department based on the past
decade, there are on average about 700 hit-and-runs a year in which about 1,000
people are injured and some 18 people are killed.
Yet our courts are wary
of handing down truly harsh sentences when a reckless driver kills or handicaps
for life innocent pedestrians or cyclists (most hit-and-runs do not involve
another car) and abandons the scene – and the victim – in a futile attempt to
escape justice (the vast majority of hit-and-run perpetrators and quickly
apprehended).
Too often we hear of plea bargains being reached such as in
the case of 12-year-old Amir Balahsan of Yehud, who was reduced to a vegetative
state by hitand- run perpetrator Pnina Toren and passenger Omri Naim. The two
were sentenced to three years.
In January, the Supreme Court actually
reduced the sentence of a particularly unsavory hit-and-run offender. In 2008, a
drunk Shai Simon sped through a red light and plowed into Meital Aharonson, 27,
and Mali Yazdi while they crossed a Tel Aviv street and then drove off,
abandoning them. Aharonson was killed, Yazdi was doomed to spend her life in a
wheelchair.
In the harshest punishment handed down for a manslaughter
charge involving a road accident, Tel Aviv District Court Judge Zvi Gurfinkel
sentenced Simon to 20 years in jail. But on appeal, the Supreme Court lowered
Simon’s sentence to 14 years, arguing that the 20-year decision “radically
exceeded the conventional punishment.”
We have in the past criticized the
Supreme Court’s pedantic adherence to the principle of sentencing consistency,
disregarding in the process the need to punish Simon’s contempt for human life,
made doubly worse by very calculated cover-up tactics. We might now add that the
Supreme Court’s decision to reduce the sentence handed down by Judge Gurfinkel
might have been in Judge Caspit’s mind when he ruled on the Cheshin
case.
No judge wants to see his ruling overturned by a higher
court.
Under the circumstances, we welcome a new bill, drafted by MKs
Moshe Matlon and Robert Elituv (Israel Beiteinu) and Ze’ev Bielski (Kadima) that
would ban plea bargains in hit-and-run cases. It would also increase the maximum
sentence for a fatal hit-and-run – not including other offenses such as driving
under the influence or obstructing justice – to 14 years from just seven to nine
years at present. The seven-to-nine- year maximum would be transformed into the
minimum.
The Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee approved the
bill earlier this month for its second and third readings. Let’s hope it becomes
law soon. If judges refuse to heed the call of retired justice Cheshin for harsh
punishment against hit-and-run criminals, lawmakers are right to step in and
force them to do so.