Adrian Schwartz

Last updated
Adrian Ben Herman Schwartz
Born1948
Romania
StatusReleased from prison, under house arrest
NationalityIsraeli
OccupationFormer backgammon champion
Conviction(s) Sexual offences, rape
Criminal chargeRape, indecent assault
Penalty25 years imprisonment, later reduced to 20 years

Adrian Ben Herman Schwartz (born 1948) is an Israeli former backgammon champion and convicted serial rapist. He was the first person to be put on retrial following the result of a DNA test, which again resulted in a conviction by the Supreme Court of Israel.

Contents

Biography

Born in Romania in 1948, Schwartz was first convicted of sexual offences in 1969, receiving a 14-year prison term, but served only nine years before he was released in 1978. Not long after, he became an active member of several chess clubs and participated in backgammon competitions, quickly achieving the rank of champion in the former, and was a senior candidate for a chessmaster.

In the early 1990s, Schwartz was rearrested after he was accused of several rapes, of which he would be convicted of only one and sentenced to 20 years imprisonment. Through his trial, he professed his innocence and claimed that this was only because of his previous convictions. Since his conviction, Schwartz has worked from prison to prove his innocence in a long series of motions and appeals, as well as initiating legal proceedings, one of which resulted in a retrial. Although he is a convicted sex offender with problematic behavior, it was deduced that law enforcement agencies had conducted suspiciously in his case, raising doubts from judges and public figures.

Among his supporters are Prof. Kenneth Mann, the founder and first Chief Public Defender of Israel's Public Defense, and Prof. Mordechai Kremnitzer, a criminal expert who teaches law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

Court proceedings

In February 1991, Schwartz was charged in the Tel Aviv District Court with seven counts of rape and indecent assaults on children, although authorities suspected the true number was double that amount. The main evidence was based on identifications from a police lineup. The panel of judges, headed by Justice Amnon Straschnov, acquitted him in five of these cases, after it was determined that there were errors in the identification, and they couldn't be used as evidence. In the remaining two cases, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment.

In 1995, after an appeal to the Supreme Court, he was acquitted of another rape case, after it was determined it was wrongful too. The sole remaining case had occurred in Jerusalem, while the others were in the Central District. According to the verdict, Schwartz preyed upon an 11-year-old girl returning home from a public library, and on various pretexts, lured her to a dark shelter, where he raped her while threatening her with a knife. The girl later recognized Schwartz from photos presented to her, and also identified his wallet. This identification and additional circumstantial evidence provided by the prosecution led to his conviction. Among other things, he refused to give blood and semen samples, rationalizing that the investigating authorities would skew the findings to worsen his condition. In this case, the conviction remained unchanged, but his sentence was reduced to 20 years imprisonment. Schwartz's request for another hearing on his appeal was denied.

In 1997, the Supreme Court reviewed his request for an appeal which, according to him, had the power to point out his innocence, but was withheld by the Criminal Department. In the end, the request was denied.

In 2002, Schwartz petitioned the Tel Aviv District Court to be released on parole, to seek medical attention to reduce his risky behavior, but it was denied.

DNA testing

In 1996, Prof. Mann was informed that the possibility of comparing blood samples would exonerate the convict. He persuaded Adrian to agree to provide blood samples, and appealed to the Supreme Court to order an examination whose results could lead to Schwartz's acquittal. The court denied the request, but instead allowed a DNA exam to link some semen found at the crime and compare it. Schwartz initially refused the test, arguing that police would compromise the results, but three years later, when he agreed, the prosecution refused on the grounds that the matter had been exhausted on all instances, and the Supreme Court was required to rule.

In June 2001, Justice Mishael Cheshin ruled that Schwartz's request should be denied, but due to the state's consent, an examination would be conducted by the Abu Kabir Forensic Institute.

The findings of the initial tests were inconclusive, and the Supreme Court ruled for supplementary tests. In 2004, after they were completed, Dr. Maya Freund concluded that the girl's genetic profile and that of an unidentified male couldn't be positively linked to Adrian Schwartz. During the hearings, she retracted her previous statements, saying that there had been a technical error, correcting that, based on the results, "it cannot be ruled out that this is Schwartz's DNA". At the hearings, another new piece of evidence was presented which, ostensibly, cast doubt on the conviction.

In September 2005, and after two more crucial witnesses were brought on Schwartz's behalf, Justice Edmond Levy ruled that "the existence of a retrial in the applicant's case is warranted by the new evidence before the court, which, if accepted as credible, may change the outcome in his favor." [1]

In 2005, the new trial began in the Tel Aviv District Court, and after four years, in June 2009, he was convicted a second time. Schwartz appealed to the Supreme Court over his conviction, but it was denied, as well as his request for another hearing. In early September 2010, he was released from prison. The Tel Aviv District Court ruled that he should remain under house arrest and is prohibited from approaching any areas frequented by minors. [2] In January 2019, Schwartz again filed a motion for a retrial, which was denied.

Supreme Court outcomes

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moshe Katsav</span> Israeli politician; 8th President of Israel (born 1945)

Moshe Katsav is an Israeli former politician who was the eighth President of Israel from 2000 to 2007. He was also a leading Likud member of the Israeli Knesset and a minister in its cabinet. He was the first Mizrahi Jew to be elected to the presidency, and second non-Ashkenazi president after Yitzhak Navon.

Abraham Hirschson was an Israeli politician. He served as a member of the Knesset for Likud and Kadima between 1981 and 1984, and again from 1992 until 2009. He also held the posts of Minister of Communications, Minister of Finance and Minister of Tourism. He resigned following allegations of corruption, and was ultimately convicted of stealing close to 2 million shekels from the National Workers Labor Federation while he was its chairman.

Benny Sela is an Israeli serial rapist.

Kevin Coe is an American convicted rapist from Spokane, Washington, often referred to in the news media as the South Hill Rapist. As of May 2008, Coe is still a suspect in dozens of rapes, the number of which is unusually large; his convictions received an unusual amount of attention from appeals courts. His mother, Ruth, was convicted of hiring a hitman against the judge and the prosecutor at her son's trial following his conviction. The bizarre relationship between Coe and his mother became the subject of a nonfiction book, Son: A Psychopath and his Victims, by the crime author Jack Olsen.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom</span> 2007 carjacking, rape, and murder of a couple in Knoxville, Tennessee

Channon Gail Christian, aged 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom Jr., aged 23, were from Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. They were kidnapped on the evening of January 6, 2007, when Christian's vehicle was carjacked. The couple were taken to a rental house. Both of them were raped, tortured, and murdered. Four males and one female were arrested, charged, and convicted in the case. In 2007, a grand jury indicted Letalvis Darnell Cobbins, Lemaricus Devall Davidson, George Geovonni Thomas, and Vanessa Lynn Coleman on counts of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder. Also in 2007, Eric DeWayne Boyd was indicted by a federal grand jury of being an accessory to a carjacking, resulting in serious bodily injury to another person and misprision of a felony. In 2018, Boyd was indicted on state-level charges of kidnapping, robbery, rape, and murder.

Iwao Hakamada is a Japanese former professional boxer who was sentenced to death on September 11, 1968, for a 1966 mass murder that became known as the Hakamada Incident. On March 10, 2011, Guinness World Records certified Hakamada as the world's longest-held death row inmate. In March 2014, he was granted a retrial and an immediate release when the Shizuoka district court found there was reason to believe evidence against him had been falsified.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Avigdor Feldman</span> Israeli civil rights lawyer

Avigdor Feldman, is a civil and human rights lawyer in Israel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anat Kamm–Uri Blau affair</span> Leak of classified IDF documents

The Anat Kamm–Uri Blau affair refers to a leak of thousands of classified Israel Defense Forces (IDF) documents by the former Israeli soldier Anat Kamm.

Rape by deception is a situation in which the perpetrator deceives the victim into participating in a sexual act to which they would otherwise not have consented, had they not been deceived. Deception can occur in many forms, such as illusory perceptions, false statements, and false actions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">African immigration to Israel</span> Movement from Africa to Israel of people that are not natives or Israeli citizens

African immigration to Israel is the international movement to Israel from Africa of people that are not natives or do not possess Israeli citizenship in order to settle or reside there. This phenomenon began in the second half of the 2000s, when a large number of people from Africa entered Israel, mainly through the then-lightly fenced border between Israel and Egypt in the Sinai Peninsula. According to the data of the Israeli Interior Ministry, 26,635 people arrived illegally in this way by July 2010, and over 55,000 by January 2012. In an attempt to curb the influx, Israel constructed the Egypt–Israel barrier. Since its completion in December 2013, the barrier has almost completely stopped the immigration of Africans into Israel across the Sinai border.

The Murder of Danny Katz was a terrorist attack carried out in 1983 in which a Palestinian militant killed 14-year-old Israeli Danny Katz. The attack, prominent among a series of attacks aimed at Israeli children during the early 1980s, shocked the Israeli public due to its brutal nature. It signified to many in the Israeli public a deterioration to their personal security at that time.

This is a list of notable overturned convictions in Canada.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hanan Goldblatt</span> Israeli actor, comedian and singer (born 1941)

Hanan Goldblatt is an Israeli actor, comedian and singer who appeared in plays, films, television programs, and who was most widely known for his part in the educational TV show "Bli Sodot". In 2008, Goldblatt was convicted of perpetrating acts of rape as well as other sex offenses against women in his acting class.

Daniel Ken Holtzclaw is a former police officer in the United States. He was convicted in December 2015 of multiple counts of rape, sexual battery, and other sex offenses while working for the Oklahoma City Police Department.

The murder of Tair Rada, a 13-year-old Israeli schoolgirl, was committed in 2006, in the girls' bathroom of her school in Katzrin. Roman Zdorov, a Ukrainian national residing in Israel and working at the school as a floorer, was convicted of the murder and was sentenced to life imprisonment on September 14, 2010. His prosecution and conviction have been a source of controversy, receiving much media coverage, as well as being the focus of an Israeli documentary TV series called Shadow of Truth that has gained worldwide attention on Netflix. On August 26, 2021, Zdorov was released from prison to house arrest after many appeals.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Khaled Kabub</span> Israeli jurist (born 1958)

Khaled Kabub is an Israeli-Arab judge. Kabub was appointed in 2022 at the Supreme Court of Israel becoming its first Muslim member to be permanently appointed.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Goel Ratzon</span> Israeli polygamist

Goel Ratzon is an Israeli polygamist who led a cult in Hatikva Quarter in south Tel Aviv. As the cult leader, Ratzon had 21 wives, who bore him 49 children. In September 2014, Tel Aviv-Yafo District Court convicted Ratzon of rape, fraud and other offences against his wives and daughters. He was sentenced to 30 years' imprisonment.

Shlomo Haliva, known as The Weeping Rapist, is an Israeli serial rapist, murderer and suspected serial killer. Convicted for the murder of a woman in 1983, he was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Gabriel Turgeman, known as The Evasive Pedophile, is an Israeli serial rapist who raped at least five young girls in Ashdod from 2002 to 2004. For his crimes, he was sentenced to 45 years imprisonment, the highest sentence imposed on a sex offender in the country.

References

  1. Zvi Noach (September 9, 2005). "Retrial for Adrian Schwartz". Globes (in Hebrew).
  2. Raanan Ben Tzur (September 2, 2010). "Adrian Schwartz released: "I'm not dangerous to girls"". Ynet (in Hebrew).