No luck for Deben Natale in court of appeal
Mpho Mokwape | Monday May 12, 2014 16:53
On Friday, a three-man bench of Ian Kirby, Elijah Legwaila and Isaac Lesetedi said Natale should not waste the court’s time because he was lucky to get the minimum sentence. They saw no point in his attempt to file a case that may have the effect of reducing the sentence by 16 days only.
“In this case, 16 days in custody is not really a long time and that coupled with the viciousness of the offence, the unashamed public abduction and defilement of a 16-year-old school girl, should make the society stand up and say, enough is enough,” said the judges.
They said that people like Natale should be taken out of society for a considerably longer time than the minimum sentence he got for the horrible offence.
“A 30-year-old man who finds that there is nothing wrong with brazenly abducting and raping a 16-year-old school girl, grabbing her while prowling the streets as if on a hunting escapade, should be taken out of society for a very long time,” the judges said.
They said backdating of sentences is only intended to ensure that accused persons do not suffer undue punishment as a result of long delays which sometime occur between the apprehension and the completion of trial. But in Natale’s case, they did not find that 16 days was an undue delay taking into account the country’s adversarial system and the seriousness of the case.
“We also considered whether the circumstances of the case warranted such backdating, which included the appropriateness of the sentence in the case,” they said. Natale has been in jail since 2009 and has made more than one attempt to appeal his conviction and sentence. In 2011 his appeal, filed jointly with his partner in crime, Mmopelo Marampu was dismissed by Justice David Newman of the High Court. He suffered the same fate before Justice Isaac Lesetedi in the High Court early this year.