Rest is fine
In the Late Final edition of the Cape Argus yesterday, several aspects of a judgment delivered by Cape High Court Judge Basheer Waglay were incorrectly recorded.
The report related to the murder trial of Booi Marthinus, who was acquitted of the 2007 Rawsonville murder of two-year-old Sonja Brown.
During the editing process, parts of the judgment were incorrectly represented.
A large part of the report was also cut due to space constraints.
It was reported yesterday that Marthinus was accused of murdering Sonja and then stuffing her into a sewage tank. However, the evidence of the pathologist showed that Sonja was alive when she was in the sewage tank and that she had died as a result of drowning.
It was also reported that Marthinus had waited 20 months for the finding. However, he was charged with the murder 20 months ago.
In addition, the report quoted Judge Waglay as saying that the evidence, as a whole, did not form a coherent and logical connection to Marthinus. What Judge Waglay in fact found was that a statement Marthinus had made to police after his arrest, when taken together with all the other circumstantial evidence presented, could point to the accused’s guilt if it had formed a logical and coherent connection. But Judge Waglay found that it had not.
Judge Waglay also ruled that he could not rely on the evidence of State witnesses Johanna Martiens and Gawie Marthinus because there was no corroboration for their testimony. This was incorrectly recorded.
In addition, the report said the court had been obliged to find that the State had proved conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
However, it should have recorded that the State was tasked with proving the accused’s guilt beyond reasonable doubt, but had failed to do so.
The Cape Argus regrets the errors and apologises for any inconvenience caused.
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