ON any scorecard of the death sentence, the late Judge B O’Donovan handed down more death sentences than any of his colleagues. In a three-year period he sent 25 prisoners to be hanged, and in his career he handed down 39 death sentences.
On the other hand, one judge, NM McArthur, never sent a single convict to the gallows even though in three cases, the death sentence had been expected.
The South African Journal on Human Rights concluded in 1991 that the fairest way of looking at how individual judges applied the death penalty was to compare sentencing (as a percentage) against the number of cases heard, the numbers of accused and the number of charges carrying the death penalty.
They applied this system to the Transvaal Division judges, looking at the period before the death penalty was suspended and found Judge MC de Klerk was a top scorer, having handed down the death sentence in more than 35% of cases he heard. Others were:
* Judge WJ Human: 33,3%
* Judge LTC Harms: 32 %
* Judge MJ Strydom: 31,8%
* Judge L le Grange: 31,3%
* Judge Irving Steyn: 30,3%
* Judge B O’Donovan: 29,1%
* Judge TT Spoelstra: 27,3%
High percentages did not necessarily translate to big numbers of people sentenced, however, and vice versa.
For example, Judge DJ Curlewis sent 14 people to the gallows in a three-year period. But this was only about 9% of the death-penalty cases he heard.