A special court commissioned by the High Court convicted
Judge Hila Cohen of the Haifa Magistrate Court of improper
discharge of duty and conduct unbecoming a judge. She was
then sentenced to a reprimand and a job transfer, although
Judge Arad wanted to have her permanently removed from the
bench.
As reported by News First Class, a website of
investigative reporter Yoav Yitzhak, Hila Cohen was
appointed to the Haifa Magistrate Court in 2002. At first
she served as a small-claims judge and later as a judge for
local matters.
A legal complaint, filed against Judge Cohen five months ago
on 31 March by Justice Minister Tzippi Livni, describes two
incidents in which Judge Cohen arrived late for cases she
was scheduled to hear. Although the litigants had left the
courtroom before she arrived, Judge Cohen subsequently
arranged transcripts to give the impression that a hearing
had been held before her with the litigants in attendance.
When she finished preparing the transcripts and the
decisions, she tore up written requests that the litigants
had left behind to postpone the hearing, and threw them into
the trash.
"The defendant did all this in order to conceal and cover up
her frequent lateness and absences from the courtroom on
days and times when hearings were scheduled," reads the
complaint.
According to the ruling, "On June 19, 2005 we decided to
charge Judge Hila Cohen with improper discharge of her duty
in violation of Regulation 18a(1) of the Court Law and with
conducting herself in a manner unbecoming her status as a
judge in Israel in violation of Regulation 18a(2) of the
Courts Law. The grounds for the complaint are described in
detail in the ruling. In summary, it was proven to the
special court that while sitting on the bench over the
course of two days of hearings, Judge Cohen produced 14
transcripts and decisions that did not properly reflect the
events that took place in the courtroom during the actual
hearings conducted before her."
The special court assessed Yaakov Geva's request for a
hearing delay in one of the incidents. Geva's hearing was
originally scheduled for 9:00 a.m., but by 10:10 a.m. Judge
Cohen had still not arrived. Unable to wait any longer, Geva
filed a written request for a postponement of the hearing
and left, but when Judge Cohen finally arrived she listed in
the transcripts that Geva was present at the hearing and
that verbal exchanges even took place between the two
litigants. Her decision for that day did not include any
mention of the postponement request, her own tardiness or
Geva's inability to wait any longer.
In the ruling Judge Cheshin writes, "An individual reading
the transcripts can arrive at only one conclusion: the
defendants and their representatives were present during the
courtroom hearings and even made remarks and requests. Yet
nobody denies that the defendants and their attorneys were
not in the courtroom when the transcripts were written.
Therefore the transcripts were misleading, transcripts that
do not properly reflect, as they should, what was said and
what took place in the hearings held before Judge Cohen.
Furthermore, Judge Cohen tore up and destroyed requests for
hearing postponements left behind by litigants before they
left the courthouse, thereby preventing the requests from
being documented in the court files."
Judge Cohen admitted to most of the facts listed in the
complaint but claimed they were not done to hide her
lateness but were innocent errors and not intended to
conceal the litigants' absence from the hearings. She also
claimed that the complaints against her were started by
workers at the City of Haifa's Justice Department acting in
collusion against her due to her desire to alter practices
at the Court for Local Matters.
"Tearing up requests and throwing the pieces into the trash
is a serious lapse in Judge Cohen's conduct and we note that
we have never heard of this type of conduct by a judge,"
writes Judge Cheshin in the ruling. However Judge Cheshin
did not determine that her actions were designed to cover up
arriving late at hearings and therefore did not find it
necessary to have her stripped of her judicial powers.
Judge M. Arad, however, writes, "At the foundation of being
a judge are personal integrity and honesty. Without these
traits a person cannot be a judge (see "Shofet Bachevrah
Democratit" by Aharon Barak, 2004, p. 409). The opinion I
wrote describes the judge's actions in detail. These acts
show that the judge intentionally prepared, in 14 cases,
false transcripts and destroyed requests by the defendants
in order to prevent the documentation of her many late
arrivals at the courthouse. Therefore, in my opinion, the
appropriate punishment for the inappropriate conduct of the
judge is to remove her from her post."
