Olmert awaits sentencing, hoping 'turpitude' won't torpedo his political comeback

Having survived two major charges, former prime minister hopes to avoid jail time for breach of trust conviction

Ehud Olmert’s freedom and his political future are at stake as lawyers face off in court on Wednesday for the sentencing portion of the former prime minister’s corruption trial.

State prosecutors will ask judges to declare that Olmert committed a crime involving moral turpitude, and sentence him to prison time, following his July conviction of breach of trust in a real estate investment case.

If the court finds that the case did involve moral turpitude, and if Olmert is sentenced to a minimum of three months in prison, then by law he will be barred from re-entering politics for at least seven years. That would quash any possibility that Olmert might lead a centrist party in the elections that are slated to take place in October 2013, as has been speculated since July’s verdicts.A breach of trust conviction for a politician has never carried both moral turpitude and a prison sentence of three months or more, legal analysts have said.

In the run-up to the sentencing hearing on Tuesday, Olmert’s defense attorneys said the prosecution’s aims were unfounded, saying that the issue of moral turpitude is moot because the former prime minister is no longer a public figure. Prosecution attorneys responded by noting that Olmert enjoys an office, a car and other publicly funded benefits. The defense team, in turn, claimed that Olmert would waive his right to those benefits so as not to be considered a public figure, and labeled the prosecution’s tactic “legal acrobatics” and an “excuse” to stain the former prime minister.

In a separate case, Olmert is also facing charges of taking bribes in the Holyland real estate scandal when he served as mayor of Jerusalem. That case is widely regarded as one of the largest corruption scandals in Israel’s history. In addition to Olmert, it also involves another former mayor of Jerusalem, Uri Lupolianski, plus former Israel Lands Administration director Yaakov Efrati and several others. That trial is ongoing.