Cape High Court prosecutor Carine Teunissen on Thursday called for ”at least 20 years” jail for Mitchell’s Plain magistrate Sithembele Elvis Tebe, who a year ago shot dead an inebriated motorist in a hit-and-run road rage incident in Khayelitsha.
Defence counsel Allan Boswell countered this with a plea for mercy, in the form of a partially suspended jail sentence.
Tebe appeared before Judge Anton Veldhuizen, who said he needed time to consider sentence, and postponed the case to Tuesday next week.
Tebe’s bail was withdrawn after his conviction for murder on Wednesday.
The case was a sequel to a late-afternoon collision in November, 2002, when Tebe chased after and shot dead intoxicated motorist Bongani Pendula, who had broadsided into Tebe’s car at a T-junction and sped away.
Teunissen contended that Tebe not only qualified for the minimum sentence of 15 years for un-premeditated murder, but that even a sentence of at least 20 years would be appropriate.
As a magistrate, he should have realised the consequences of his actions before they happened, and the chase that followed the collision had also given Tebe enough time to ”cool down” and reconsider, she said.
She said the court could not ignore the prescribed minimum sentence as an option.
However, the judge said the case had circumstances justifying a sentence less severe than the 15-year minimum.
He added: ”In my experience, people doing things on the spur of the moment do not consider the consequences.”
Although the court had to consider the interests of society, the community had to understand that a long-term jail sentence would be too severe for someone like the accused, he said.
Boswell, in turn, reminded the court that the incident had ruined Tebe’s legal career.
The judge replied: ”Yes, we can be certain that the doors of the legal profession are now closed to him.”
The judge said Tebe was not in need of rehabilitation.
He said a jail sentence was unavoidable, but that it would serve no purpose to suspend any portion of it, as suggested by Boswell, as the purpose of a suspended jail sentence was to deter the offender from repeating his offence.
He said Tebe was unlikely to ever repeat the offence. – Sapa