Eight years after former northern KwaZulu-Natal police officer Pieter Henning was jailed for the murder of a hitchhiker, he failed in an application for leave to appeal against the conviction and sentence this week.
Henning - who is serving a 53-year jail term for Sithembiso Sibisi's murder, and two others for which he was sentenced separately - applied to file a late application in the Pietermaritzburg High Court for leave to appeal against both trials.
On Wednesday, Judge Phillip Levinsohn dismissed his application in connection with Sithembiso Sibisi's killing, finding that nothing had changed since his original judgment in March 1999.
In 1999, Levinsohn described Henning's torture of Sibisi as "callous and reprehensible". The murder had taken place near Dundee in November 1996.
Henning had been found guilty of having throttled Sibisi on the back of his bakkie in the wake of a series of assaults which had begun at Henning's farm, Sheepridge.
Sibisi's body was then thrown into the Buffalo River.
In his March 1999 judgment, Judge Levinsohn said the assaults appeared to have been sparked by Sibisi asking why he had been taken to Henning's farm after he had been given a lift, instead of being dropped off where he had wanted to be.
Henning admitted in his own evidence at the time to not having "much time" for black people. He denied evidence that he had throttled Sibisi, and again raised the issue in his application for leave to appeal.
He said that a key state witness, Johan Potgieter, his late brother, Johan Henning who had committed suicide, and Johan's fiance, Eleanor van Gent, had conspired to put the blame on him.