OWN CORRESPONDENT, Gaborone | Tuesday
SOUTH African Marietta Bosch, who has been on death row in Gaborone Central Prison for a year, has lost her appeal in the Botswana Appeal Court against her conviction for murder.
The sentence was confirmed by the Botswana Appeals Court. Bosch’s last resort before being hanged for murder is to apply for presidential clemency.
“The option of clemency is a possibility,” her defence attorney Edward Fashole-Luke II said.
Bosch, 50, was sentenced to death in the Botswana High Court last year for the murder in June 1996 of South African Maria Magdalene Wolmarans who was her best friend and wife of the man she has since married.
Delivering a judgement which lasted for nearly two hours, Acting Judge President Timothy Aguda said: “I find that the accused’s murder of the deceased was carefully planned over a long period of time and it was without mercy.
“It involved travelling to South Africa where she collected a gun and she illegally brought it into the country.”
Aguda, Appeal Judge Justice Tebbutt and Botswana’s Chief Justice Julian Nganunu found there was substantial evidence that Bosch – on death row in the Gaborone Central Prison for a year – did commit the murder.
Bosch, 50, was represented by British Queen’s Counsel Desmond de Silva and Fashole-Luke II, whose case was based on the misdirection of the judge – AFP