Simon was charged with assaulting a police officer.
The prosecution claimed he was dangerous, asked for detention until the end of the legal proceedings and the court responded.
According to the accepted statement, the person is presumed innocent unless his guilt is proven beyond a reasonable doubt, i.e. in the vicinity of certainty.
The king's way of proving guilt is an orderly criminal trial, in which witnesses are heard and evidence is presented.
But the prosecution has another way of conviction - a plea deal, when the pressure of detention may trample on any claim of innocence.
Let's return to Simon.
This is not a homeless man from my previous list - he also happens to be named Shimon.
He is a member of the Ethiopian community, and unfortunately, police officers arrest or detain him.
The Americans are joking that there is an offense that defined "driving while black is punishable by imprisonment ..." (Driving while black).
According to the indictment, on October 7, 2001, the defendant and another person sat next to the Meron police and drank alcohol.
Two police officers approached them and one asked Shimon to identify himself, he claimed - on suspicion of drug use.
Simon refused to tell the policeman he knew.
The policeman announced that he was detained, without informing him of the reason for the delay as required by law, and forcibly put him in the car.
Simon resisted and the policeman lay down on the back seat while he was above it.
The video does not show the full event, but you hear that Shimon said to the policeman "You are strangling me!".
According to Shimon, he had to defend himself against suffocation under the weight of the policeman's large body, so he bit the policeman.
Unfortunately the bite injured the policeman, who consumed stitches.
During the arrest hearing, Shimon presented documentation of marks on his neck.
One must learn from the American experience: methods by which police officers subdue civilians during detention can cause suffocation and even civilian death - recall the shocking video of the suffocation of the African-American George Floyd.
The right to defend also exists in front of a police officer.
It is therefore necessary to clarify Shimon's self-defense claim, in an attempt to do justice.
But his trial was repeatedly postponed: once because of the previous defense attorney's request, once because of the judge's busy diary, and now - after Shimon has been in custody for six and a half months - due to the judge's reserve service for a month.
A situation has arisen in which a person is held in the framework of the innocence-possession trample known as "detention until the end of the proceedings" for seven months, and the hand of the detention judges is still tilted.
Had the trial taken place and Shimon had been convicted, the expected punishment is a prison sentence of several months.
Precisely without a conviction, the detention is extended beyond the proportionate sentence.
In such a situation, innocent defendants may plead guilty to a plea deal in which they will be released.
Simon is not alone, and that is how the method works.
No wonder about 85% of lawsuits end in plea bargains, in which justice is waived in the name of efficiency.
"Shimon's defense attorney, Adv. Eyal Abolfia, has extensive experience with police officers who attacked civilians and accused them of assaulting a police officer, and of persecuting members of the Ethiopian community by police officers, who sometimes act in accordance with racist stereotypes. JDC ", as alleged by the police, but a shofar: they blew a shofar on Mount Meron. Gives decisive weight to the probation officer's assessment that Simon is dangerous. Studies show that there is no valid and reliable method for predicting danger. This is not a person who is dangerous to the public, but perhaps police officers trying to arrest him.
Is Simon guilty or innocent?
In most criminal cases this is not clarified at all.
Under the pressure of detention, many of the detainees are forced to confess - both guilty and innocent.
Maybe Simon is actually Don Quixote.
Were we wrong?
Fixed!
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