Appeal court grants wife-killer Jason Rohde's wish to spend Christmas at home

Wife murderer Jason Rohde has been granted bail.

The former property executive’s lawyer Daniel Witz told TimesLIVE that the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) had granted Rohde R200,000 bail on Wednesday. The high court in Cape Town denied him bail in August.

Witz said Rohde would be released under “normal conditions including reporting to a police station”.

“It’s the normal conditions, I don’t have them in front of me but it is R200,000 payable and a R1m guarantee,”  said Witz. “We are absolutely ecstatic.”  

The SCA granted Rohde leave to appeal both his conviction and sentence in July. “The date for the hearing of the appeal will be in 2020 but we don’t have the date yet,” Witz said.

Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe handed Rohde a 20-year sentence in February for the murder of his wife, Susan. Rohde was also handed a five-year sentence for defeating the ends of justice for making the murder scene look like a suicide.

The court found that Rohde killed his wife, with whom he had three daughters, in a room they shared at Spier, near Stellenbosch, in July 2016. Rohde attended a work conference there and Susan insisted on joining him after she discovered that he was having an affair with a colleague.