The Cape High Court has ordered the immediate release from prison of three burglars who stole whisky, brandy, soft drinks and sweets worth R800 during a break-in at the Hellenic Sports Club earlier this year.
Anthony Kleinschmidt, Sedick Hendricks and Lankey Alexander had earlier been sentenced to jail terms of 18 months each but the high court overturned these sentences.
The three burgled the sports club on April 20. Magistrate Derek Winter, who imposed the original sentences, told Sapa on Monday he had sent the three to prison because the community was fed up with rampant crime and expected the courts to deal severely with offenders.
He said the public would be outraged about the release
of the three and he called for public debate on the issue. He said the policy of courts to avoid jail sentences for first offenders, did not mean that first-offence criminals could expect suspended sentences as a matter of course.
That would encourage them to pursue their lives of crime with impunity.
Cape High Court judges Andre Blignault and Belinda van Heerden set aside the prison sentences and instead suspended their sentences. The main reasons for the court’s decision were the appalling conditions in the country’s overcrowded prisons, and the potential negative impact on the trio of exposure to hardened criminals.
Winter said High Court judges and magistrates were appointed to serve the communities, and to act in their interests. Although judges had carte blanche over sentences imposed by magistrates in criminal cases, they were often inconsistent in their individual approaches.
For example, he said, a number of stiff jail sentences handed down by Cape Town magistrate Piet Burger, in similar cases, had in fact been confirmed on review by different Cape High Court judges. – Sapa