Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein is moving ahead with an initiative that will permit Israel’s courts to take one’s medical condition and other factors into consideration when handing down sentencing against a convicted defendant. This would for example permit a court to hand down a minimum sentence in a case that would otherwise demand a stiffer sentence.

The attorney general is working on the final draft of this legislation, which Yediot Achronot reports is a response to many complaints received by Weinstein’s office regarding the nation’s penal law. Some of the complaints have come from judges on the Supreme Court and District Courts over recent years as well as from attorneys.

The lack of flexibility in the law was particularly evident in the sentenced handed down against former Jerusalem Mayor Rabbi Uri Lupoliansky by Jerusalem District Court Judge David Rosen. Despite Lupoliansky’s difficult illness and medical condition, he was sentenced to six years imprisonment. It appears as the complaints mounted Weinstein was persuaded to work to amend the law.

According to the Yediot Achronot report, while a court will have to comply with the law in sentencing a defendant, the new law will permit exceptions in extenuating circumstances. Assistant AG Roz Nizri is handling the formulation of the law in the form of a committee that he assembled which includes High Court Justice Elyakim Rubinstein, Tel Aviv District Court President Devorah Berland and representatives of the state prosecutor and Israel Police.

The current draft of the law will permit a court to break from the norm in cases of illness or in the case of one who paid a very high price – such as a person charged due to a vehicular accident in which first line family members were killed.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)