Pretoria - A man convicted on a host of charges received an early Christmas present when the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned his convictions and subsequent life imprisonment sentence – due to shoddy police investigations and poor prosecution.
Five judges of the Supreme Court emphasised that good police work, coupled with dedication from the prosecution, was vital to ensure crime was curbed in the country.
“Prosecutors play a critical role in the criminal justice system in response to crime. They generally represent the authority of the State in ensuring that perpetrators of crime are held accountable for their actions and, in that way, communicate a strong message to the community that crime will not be tolerated.
“In line with the burden of proof that rests on their shoulders, it is essential that they meticulously ensure that the matters they bring before courts have been properly investigated, and when that has been done, ensure the evidence is properly presented in court.
“Sadly, what follows is a model of the very opposite and depicts a picture of a matter that was badly investigated and badly prosecuted,” the court said.
The court found that Zwelithini Zondi, accused of opening fire at taxi operators, killing two, should receive the benefit of the doubt as the arms of the law did not properly investigate his case.
Zondi turned to the Supreme Court after his conviction on two charges of murder and three of attempted murder and his subsequent life sentence by the high court sitting in Johannesburg.
He claimed he was convicted, despite the alibi that he offered that he was at home with his girlfriend.
On July 3, 2016, at about 6pm, a group of men arrived at the Mall of Africa taxi rank in Midrand in a white VW Polo and fired gunshots at the taxi drivers/owners who were waiting to load passengers.
Witnesses testified that Zondi was one of the occupants in the Polo and it was he who had fired the shots.
They claimed that they saw him six days prior to this incident when he arrived at the taxi rank and threatened them over routes. One of the operators said he even took pictures of Zondi with his phone at the time.
Yet, following the shooting incident, he and other witnesses did not give Zondi’s name to the police and said they were “paralysed with fear”. Thus they could not provide the name. They only much later “remembered that it was him” and then insisted that he was the culprit.
The Supreme Court said identification must not only be credible but must also be reliable. Bearing in mind that the day of the shooting was described by them as similar to a war zone, the SAPS and the prosecution should have thoroughly investigated this aspect and not merely accepted the word of the witnesses.
“Their bold statements that the appellant was the person who committed the crime is not enough. It has been held that such statements unexplained, untested and uninvestigated, leave the door wide open for possibilities of mistake.
“In this matter, the prosecutor seems to have been satisfied with their evidence. The prosecutor failed to elicit sufficient evidence to establish the credibility and reliability of the state witnesses’ identification of the appellant,” the Supreme Court said.
Zondi maintained his innocence and said he told the SAPS from the start that he was with his girlfriend at the time of the shooting. Yet this aspect was also never investigated.
“It is incumbent upon the police to conduct investigations fully and upon the State to prove its case beyond reasonable doubt,” the court said in overturning the convictions.
Pretoria News