Convicted armed robber fails to ‘escape’ jail
Innocent Selatlhwa | Wednesday August 27, 2025 16:53
Khupe was convicted of house-breaking, stealing from a dwelling house, robbery, and theft of a motor vehicle, and sentenced to 10 years behind bars.
According to court documents, on or about October 27, 2017, at Pitikwe Township in Lobatse, Bokani Khupe and Godknows Ncube broke into a dwelling house of Charles Kabomo. The duo stole some items, and those recovered were a Sony radio with four speakers, a clipper set, a pink school bag, and a pair of blue Nike trainers.
On November 12, 2017, between 4 am and 6 am at Pitikwe Township in Lobatse, Ncube and Khupe jointly robbed Benson Modie. The two men, who had their faces masked, entered Modie's house at around 4 am, threatened the occupants with a knife. They tied the hands of Benson Modie, his wife, and their 16-year-old daughter and started demanding money from them.
The duo took a Hisense television, an HP laptop, a Sony projector, a Microsoft cellphone, a Nokia cellphone, a Campass knife, a bundle of keys, a black Samsung camera, two ATM cards – First National Bank and Barclays Bank – and cash amounting to P2,000. They then took the keys and their spares of the Toyota Yaris and drove away with the grey Toyota Rav 4.
For housebreaking, Khupe was sentenced to five years' imprisonment. On count two of stealing from a dwelling house, he was sentenced to four strokes or three years imprisonment. On count three of robbery, he got 10 years imprisonment, whilst for count four of theft of a motor vehicle, he was given five years imprisonment.
Khupe, being dissatisfied with the conviction and sentence, filed the notice and grounds of appeal on December 30, 2022.
He argued that procedural irregularities, including the disregard of statutory safeguards on searches and evidence collection, and the improper reconstruction of testimony to address gaps in the prosecution’s case, led to a miscarriage of justice.
He argued that the lower court erred in finding as a fact that the charges proferred against him were proven beyond a reasonable doubt.
He argued that the Magistrate's Court erred in law and in fact in admitting evidence subject to the exclusionary rule to the extent the same was gathered without observing due process to the extent that the evidence was collected without a search warrant and there was no witness from the locality to witness the proceedings as required by the law espoused in the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act.
He also said the trial court erred in law and in fact by admitting evidence gathered by the police using methods ultra vires the Police Act on use of force to break into private property, as they had threatened to use such force at the yard in Mogoditshane.
Khupe also argued that the lower court erred in law and in fact by admitting the forensic evidence, which was not part of the state's summary, and the same was irregular and inadmissible to the extent it was collected again without following due process, to the extent that the police did not demonstrate that the appellant consented to the forensic process, nor did they demonstrate that there was any witness when they collected forensic material as required by law, the Forensic Procedures Act 2014.
Khupe submitted that the contradictions on which of the two vehicles, between the grey Toyota Run-X and Toyota Rav 4, the fingerprints were lifted, were never reconciled.
In response, the state said that failure by Khupe to give a reasonable explanation of how his fingerprints were found on the stolen motor vehicle justifies the decision of the Magistrate's Court.
However, in the end, Khupe could not convince Justice Michael Motlhabi of the Lobatse High Court that he was wrongfully convicted and sentenced.
“Police Officers were acting on a tip-off, and this justified their searching at night, and this is tied to the two respectable members of the public required during the search. Corroboration is tied to the credibility of a witness. The court can convict on the evidence of a single witness if it considers such a witness credible,” he said.
In respect to the integrity of the fingerprints, Motlhabi said the magistrate in his ruling at Page 31 of the record states as follows, 'There were fingerprints that were lifted from the vehicle that is suspected to have been stolen from the complainants' place. Fingerprints were confirmed to belong to the two accused.'
Motlhabi said the contradictions between the versions of Sergeant Nyeku John and Segolame Modie (complainant), in respect to the Toyota Rav 4 and grey Toyota Run-X, are not fatal in that there is evidence that the fingerprints were uplifted from the stolen Toyota Rav 4.
“To this end, both the conviction and sentence imposed by the Magistrate's Court stand. The appeal against both conviction and sentence is without merit, and it is consequently dismissed,” he said.