A convicted rapist has to wait to hear his fate after a technicality caused a judge to set his housebreaking and rape conviction and sentence aside last week.
Now a small section of the trial has to be redone.
In 2013, Zukisani Tshantsani was found guilty of housebreaking with intent to rape and of rape.
He was sentenced to eight years and life imprisonment for the crimes, respectively.
He filed for leave to appeal both the conviction and sentence, but was refused. He then petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal and leave was granted.
Tshantsani was accused of raping a four-year-old girl and a doctor who examined the child testified that she had “severe trauma” to the genitals, consistent with forceful penetration.
Evidence in court was that Tshantsani had visited the house of the complainant during the day while she was playing on the stoep and nothing “untoward” had happened.
That evening the child was bathed and put to bed. In the hours of the morning, around 2am, the complainant’s mother was woken by the sound of a child crying and by knocking on the front door.
When she opened the door, she found the child standing outside. Her face was dirty, there was grass in her hair and her private parts were bleeding.
The court had heard that the child said she was taken to a nearby house, which she pointed out.
The doctor who examined her told the court that she had sealed the girl’s panties in a sexual assault kit. It had been sent to a forensic laboratory in the Western Cape.
Chief forensic analyst at the laboratory Lieutenant-Colonel Sharlene Otto concluded from the tests that the DNA on the panties of the complainant matched Tshantsani’s controlled blood sample.
The basis of Tshantsani’s appeal was that all the parties involved in the case misconstrued Otto’s affidavit in that she never stated that she was the person who broke the seal on the child’s panties or extracted the DNA from the panties or Tshantsani’s blood sample.
Tshantsani’s legal team said that in her affidavit, Otto said: “I received the case file and thereafter interpreted the DNA results of the crime scene.”
It was submitted on Tshantsani’s behalf that there was a missing link in the chain of evidence relating to that DNA analysis, in that there is no evidence about who broke the seal and therefore no proof that the process of the extraction of DNA was performed by a competent person.
Sitting in the Grahamstown High Court, Judge Jeremy Pickering ordered that the conviction and sentence on both counts be set aside.
“This case is remitted to the trial court in order to hear such evidence,” Pickering said.
Court to hear part of rapist case again
Now a small section of the trial has to be redone.
In 2013, Zukisani Tshantsani was found guilty of housebreaking with intent to rape and of rape.
He was sentenced to eight years and life imprisonment for the crimes, respectively.
He filed for leave to appeal both the conviction and sentence, but was refused. He then petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal and leave was granted.
Tshantsani was accused of raping a four-year-old girl and a doctor who examined the child testified that she had “severe trauma” to the genitals, consistent with forceful penetration.
Evidence in court was that Tshantsani had visited the house of the complainant during the day while she was playing on the stoep and nothing “untoward” had happened.
That evening the child was bathed and put to bed. In the hours of the morning, around 2am, the complainant’s mother was woken by the sound of a child crying and by knocking on the front door.
When she opened the door, she found the child standing outside. Her face was dirty, there was grass in her hair and her private parts were bleeding.
The court had heard that the child said she was taken to a nearby house, which she pointed out.
The doctor who examined her told the court that she had sealed the girl’s panties in a sexual assault kit. It had been sent to a forensic laboratory in the Western Cape.
Chief forensic analyst at the laboratory Lieutenant-Colonel Sharlene Otto concluded from the tests that the DNA on the panties of the complainant matched Tshantsani’s controlled blood sample.
The basis of Tshantsani’s appeal was that all the parties involved in the case misconstrued Otto’s affidavit in that she never stated that she was the person who broke the seal on the child’s panties or extracted the DNA from the panties or Tshantsani’s blood sample.
Tshantsani’s legal team said that in her affidavit, Otto said: “I received the case file and thereafter interpreted the DNA results of the crime scene.”
It was submitted on Tshantsani’s behalf that there was a missing link in the chain of evidence relating to that DNA analysis, in that there is no evidence about who broke the seal and therefore no proof that the process of the extraction of DNA was performed by a competent person.
Sitting in the Grahamstown High Court, Judge Jeremy Pickering ordered that the conviction and sentence on both counts be set aside.
“This case is remitted to the trial court in order to hear such evidence,” Pickering said.
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