No jail for Olmert pending corruption conviction appeal
Justice Noam Solberg says appeal by former prime minister appeal has validity, Supreme Court should examine testimonies that formed basis for finding Olmert guilty.
Former prime minister Ehud Olmert will not be sent to prison for a real estate corruption conviction, pending a ruling on his appeal, Supreme Court Judge Noam Solberg said Monday.
Olmert was found guilty in March of accepting bribes during his tenure as mayor of Jerusalem, in order to advance the Holyland building project, and of lying about those bribes in court. Eight other people were also found guilty of accepting bribes, including another former mayor of Jerusalem Uri Lupolianski and former head of Bank Hapoalim Danny Dankner. In May, Olmert was sentenced to six years in jail and fined 1.5 million shekels (approximtely $415,000).
Solberg on Thursday heard requests from the Holyland defendants to postpone their incarceration until after the appeal process.
On Monday, the judge noted the appeals were not a waste of time. "Even if it currently seems likely that the accused will serve time in prison, they still have claims that deserve to be heard," he said.
Solberg also highlighted several problematic sections in the testimony of the state witness.
"Not everything he said was necessarily true," said Solberg, stressing "the benefits he received, his central role as initiator and provider of the bribes, planning ruse after ruse, and his death at the height of his cross examination by Ehud Olmert's attorney, before he was questioned by other attorneys."
He noted that the district court was aware of the problematic issue of the state's witness and had decided to convict only in circumstances in which there was evidence to support his testimony. But, Solberg said, the Supreme Court should check whether the testimonies are strong enough corroboration.
Attorneys Navit Negev and Iris Niv-Sabag, who are leading Olmert's appeal, welcomed the decision to postpone his sentence. According to them, the public interest "does not only include a quick and immediate serving of punishment, but also the severe and irreversible damage to the convict it if it turns out after the appeal that his incarceration was unjustified".
On the opposite side, head of the State Attorney's criminal department claimed that the convict should start serving his sentence immediately: "The convictions indicate the severity of the affairs. This conviction exposed a dark side of graft offenses. The damage to the public trust in this case is extreme".
Appeal
The former prime minister is appealing both the conviction and the sentence, which will see him serving six years in prison for two graft offences in which he received total of NIS 560,000. But even before today, the Supreme Court decided to postpone the prison sentence of those involved in the affair, all of which were slated to begin serving their time on September 1.
Olmert's appeal is based on two major claims: The first is that Judge David Rosen based his conviction on the testimony of deceased state witness Shmuel Dechner. According to Olmert, the judge contradicted and ignored his own previous ruling, according to which, this testimony will not be used as "a stone in the conviction wall".
The second claim is that the conviction and the sentence relied on circumstantial evidence alone that falls short of those needed to support a conviction as a logical conclusion. According to Olmert the "holes" in the evidence cannot be ignored.
