The saying "The wheels of justice grind slowly" has two meanings: On the one hand, it is said to express disappointment in the failure of justice to be done, but on the other hand, it also implies that despite red tape, justice will eventually be done. State's witness S.D. died due to the combination of his age 76 with a long-time illness. But no one will ever know how much his anger, during the 80 days in which he testified, hastened his death. Olmert's defense attorney Roy Blecher is not a pleasant man. It is the attorney's job to push the witness, to point out contradictions in his testimony. He has a right to call the witness a liar, and to call him a liar again and again and again. During the Holyland trial, Judge David Rosen failed to protect the witness's dignity. His testimony, signs seem to indicate, contained a lot of truth, and he even voluntarily admitted that his own past was speckled with chapters of criminal activity. How many times was it necessary, or permissible, to throw this in his face and call him a liar- Even a man decades younger than S.D. would have had trouble withstanding the battery of attorneys who accosted him on the stand. He managed to resist them with dignity. How much weight did his testimony carry? We don't know. It is doubtful that the judge has made up his mind yet. The only thing that is clear at this stage is that the judge now has to cut the trial short. He should have seen how much stress the witness was under. It was inhumane. From the start, Tel Aviv District Court President Dvora Berliner should have assigned three judges to the case, despite the shortage in judges. In such a scenario, even if one judge was oblivious to the constant assaults on the witness by the defense team, his two colleagues would have ordered the attorneys to calm things down and lower the flames, which were apparently responsible for raising S.D.'s blood pressure. Rosen should not only have pleaded with the attorneys to cut their cross-examination short and focus on the facts rather than on insulting and disrespecting a man, he should have ordered them to do so. Judges are fully capable of saying, "Enough is enough." In the Holyland trial, the line was drawn too far, if it was drawn at all. Maybe this will serve as a lesson for the future, though the trial will be very hard to conduct from this point on because the key witness never completed his testimony. The likelihood of a plea agreement contrary to early assessments has now actually decreased. One thing is clear, however: This trial must go on with full force. There is plenty of evidence. Perhaps the most important testimony of all will soon be collected in the U.S. from the former prime minister's brother, Dr. Yossi Olmert. The right thing to do now would be to investigate Yossi Olmert's declaration that he received some 500,000 shekels ($130,000) from the state's witness, whom he did not know, and to figure out who could have been behind the payoff. The damage has already been done. The tragedy has occurred. Rosen has a duty to conduct this trial with integrity, loyalty and efficiency. So far, the efficiency part has been absent.
Both meanings ring true in the wake of the tragedy of the death of the state's witness in the Holyland trial, the real estate corruption trial of former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
