JP,  January 19, 2005

As chance would have it, two outstanding champions of justice, Ezra Goldberg, a retired police officer, and David Weiner, the deputy public defender, died recently within a short time of one another.

Together, in collaboration with the late Judge Haim Cohn, they gave of their time and energy to exonerate Amos Baranes of a murder he did not commit.

Baranes had been convicted in a legal process that was tainted from start to finish.

This is of the utmost importance because a society should be judged by the way it treats its weak and powerless, and by individuals' willingness to abandon what is convenient and fight for the weak.

In this respect, people like Goldberg and Weiner are no less vital for shaping Israel's character and essence than its leaders.

Amos Baranes was weak and powerless. He was falsely convicted after confessing to the murder as a result of police brutality and unacceptable interrogation methods. He ostensibly reenacted the crime.

The chances of his being exonerated after his conviction were slight.

He came from the margins of Israeli society and had no connections with any movers or shakers. He could not afford to hire a top lawyer.

The Supreme Court confirmed his conviction and also rejected - in a series of extremely bizarre decisions - his justified demands for a retrial.

And in a ruling I still do not understand, the Supreme Court dismissed the conviction of a police officer who had beaten Baranes up during his 'reenactment of the crime,' and lied at his trial.

This acquittal served as grounds for rejecting Baranes's request for a retrial.

Under these circumstances I found it difficult at first to believe Goldberg's claim that Baranes was innocent.

But after studying the file, speaking with senior police officers and visiting Baranes in jail, it became clear to me that Goldberg was struggling not only on behalf of an individual against whom a terrible injustice had been done. It was also a war for the face of Israeli society.

FROM THIS case I learned that the Israeli criminal justice system does not provide even minimal guarantees for the rights of defendants, and that Baranes's was not the only case of unjust conviction.

There are some very fundamental flaws in our criminal justice system. We do not have a jury system - and quite rightly so; but nor do we have a proper alternative.

Unlike the practice in other legal systems, a single Magistrate's Court judge can send defendants away for many, many years.

The court can convict and send a defendant away for life in prison based on a simple majority of judges, even when there is a minority opinion that believes the defendant should not be convicted.

(Since a defendant can only be convicted when his guilt has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt, this would imply that the minority-opinion judges are not reasonable people.)

A person can be convicted solely on a confession forced out of him in police interrogation rooms, without that confession being recorded and without even a shred of independent physical evidence.

An appellate court can convict a person acquitted by a lower court that heard the witnesses.

Until Aharon Barak's term as president of the Supreme Court retrials were very rare, and until the courageous decision made by Justice Dalia Dorner in Baranes's case, which David Weiner used his considerable talent and determination to obtain, there were no acquittals in a retrial.

These are very serious flaws which do not exist in other democracies. And were we not so preoccupied with security issues they would certainly spark an uproar in the Knesset and the press.

Ezra Goldberg, David Weiner and Haim Cohn eventually won their struggle on Baranes's behalf. But in order that these champions of justice can rest in peace, and so that we should live in peace with ourselves, these flaws in our criminal justice system must be rectified.

That will minimize the possibility of another case like Baranes's in the future, and it will make us a better and more just society.