Supreme Court overturns rape conviction after review

Adel Heib was acquitted in 2023 of raping an 82-year-old woman, but convicted on appeal by the Supreme Court; an expanded panel reverses that decision

The Supreme Court on Tuesday acquitted Adel Heib of charges that he raped an 82-year-old woman in Safed four years ago, in a review hearing of previous Supreme Court decision.

Heib was acquitted in a five-to-two ruling of an expanded panel that was reviewing the decision of a smaller Supreme Court panel to convict. The decision to review the earlier ruling was due to evidentiary concerns regarding the case and the issue of reasonable doubt.

Deputy Supreme Court President Noam Sohlberg, together with justices David Mintz, Yael Wilner, Ofer Grosskopf, and Yechiel Kasher, ruled to acquit Heib, while Supreme Court President Isaac Amit and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez opposed.

Heib, who had previously been convicted of the rape of a 70-year-old woman and served a 14-year prison sentence for the crime, is set to be released from prison on Tuesday.

Heib was first acquitted of the rape in a unanimous decision of the Nazareth District Court in November 2023.

The court found at the time that intercourse between Heib and the woman had been consensual, and that “it has not been proved that the complainant expressed passive or any other objection that the accused could understood that the complainant refused to have a relationship that was agreed between them.”

But the State Attorney’s Office appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, which ruled to convict Heib in a two-to-one ruling and determined that some of the lower court’s conclusions had been based on incorrect generalizations.

Heib was subsequently sentenced to 19 years in prison for the rape, but the public defender’s office requested a review of the appeal by a larger judicial panel resulting in Tuesday’s decision.

The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday was issued without its reasonings, which will be published at a later date.