Dangerous rapist, robber jailed for 37 years
Lebogang Mosikare | Wednesday May 23, 2018 11:41
Assault common, rape (three counts) and robbery convict Godiraone Bofitile will rue the day he approached court to appeal that the court did not take into account the period he spent in prison prior to his conviction and that the sentences passed on February 2015 should have been made to run concurrently or partly with sentences passed on July 17, 2015.
Bofitile, also known as Ndire, was sentenced to six months, 10 years (for the three counts of rape) and 12 years for robbery, respectively in jail.
The cases were registered as CMMPY-000167-12. The sentences in the matter, the judge noted, were ordered to run concurrently.
In yet another matter (CMMPY-000168-12) before the same magistrate, Bofitile was sentenced to five years in prison in connection to burglary and 10 years in jail with respect to rape.
The sentence, Makhwade said, was passed on July 30, 2014.
“The sentences in this matter were also ordered to run concurrently. The appellant approached this court and raised two grounds with respect to the sentence. The first ground was that the court did not take into account the period he spent in jail.
The second issue was that the sentences passed on February 17, 2015 should have been made to run concurrently with sentences that were passed on July 2014,” Makhwade said.
He added that he called for the record of proceedings in case CMMPY-000168-12 in order to find out whether in fact the period of imprisonment that the appellant spent prior to his convictions was taken into account or not.
“It transpired that the period was not made part of the sentences that the accused person is serving. The respondent (Directorate of Public Prosecutions) rightly concedes that this period should have been taken into account. The records of the two cases point out that period the appellant absconded during the course of the trials but was finally apprehended and he was detained until the completion of the case in July 2014,” Makhwade said.
It is clear from the records, Makhwade noted, that the appellant was in detention from December 20, 2013 until he was sentenced on July 30, 2014.
“There is no basis for this period of time not to be included in the sentence of the imprisonment, it shall therefore be ordered that the appellant’s sentence should be reckoned from December 20, 2013,” he said…
The total period that the accused person is supposed to spend in jail, Makhwade said, is 22 years.
“This sentence is for one count of assault, three counts of rape, one count of burglary and one count of robbery…In the circumstances, it is my considered view that the magistrate was correct when sentencing the appellant in February 2015 by not ordering any portion of the sentences to run concurrently with the previous matter,” Makhwade said.
Bofitile was dealt a heavy blow when Makhwade ordered that the sentences in CMMPY-000167-12 (22 years) and CMMPY-000168-12 (15 years) should run consecutively.
This means that even if the time that Bofitile spent in jail before trial is factored in, he will spend close to 37 years in jail.