The Supreme Court recently rejected Maxim Tal’s appeal against his conviction for the murder of his late wife Maria Tal. The indictment filed by the Haifa District Attorney’s Office indicates that Maxim and Maria lived with their minor daughters in Kiryat Bialik. During September 2019, due to a conflict between the two and Maria’s intentions To say goodbye to him, Maxim decided to cause her death. Thus, one Friday morning in the early hours of the morning, Maxim took a large knife, entered the bedroom, and stabbed Maria in the neck while she was lying on her bed. A short time later, he called the police and reported that she had committed suicide. The District Court in Haifa convicted Tal with the crime of aggravated murder, aggravated assault and attempted destruction of evidence and sentenced him to life imprisonment along with 3 years of actual imprisonment to be served cumulatively, and ordered him to pay compensation in the amount of NIS 258,000 to Maria’s family.
Maxim appealed the verdict and claimed that there was no murder at all and Maria was the one who committed suicide. His objections to the verdict focused on the meaning that should be given to the fabric of the circumstantial evidence against him. Among other things, his defense attorney tried to make use of the conclusion of the opinion submitted by the National Center for Forensic Medicine, according to which the suicide claim cannot be ruled out from the autopsy findings.
The judges of the Supreme Court, Yosef Elron, Khaled Kabov and Hihiel Kosher, rejected Maxim’s appeal and accepted the state’s position, submitted by the criminal department of the State Attorney’s Office, according to which the evidence against Maxim clearly shows that he murdered Maria after planning to do so. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously, “The fabric of circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion that the appellant murdered the deceased. The alternative explanation offered by the appellant, according to which the deceased committed suicide, does not fit with the evidence and does not establish a real and substantial doubt regarding the strength of the conclusion… The clear picture in the background of the death of the deceased is Because the appellant’s jealousy of her and the obsession with which he behaved towards her, accompanied by verbal and physical violence on his part – constituted a motive for the murder of the deceased by the appellant.” It was further determined that “besides the fact that the evidence presented by the appellant on his own initiative does not support his version, even the explanations he provided for the circumstantial evidence of his duty – are not plausible.”
In the verdict, the Supreme Court noted: “Maria Tal’s life was cut short due to the obsessive jealousy of her partner – the appellant. Where Maria saw a glimmer of light in anticipation of life after her separation from the appellant, he felt humiliated by her and was not ready to accept a separation as usual.” In relation to the murder of women due to their desire to separate, he noted that “the thought that a married woman, in the present or in the past, is the property of her partner from now on and forever; no, her life is put in danger, as we have recently witnessed; it is a fundamentally distorted perception that transcends denominations and religions that has no place in society in Israel. This sad phenomenon must be uprooted, and this must be given adequate expression in the punishment handed down to criminals who behave this way.”
