The judge in the baby Jordan Leigh Norton murder case is to rule on Tuesday on a media bid to publish photographs of key evidence in the trial, including fingerprints.
Judge Basheer Waglay reserved judgement on Monday after hearing argument from counsel for the Independent Newspapers group as well as the state, which is opposing the application.
The Independent group, whose publications have been running saturation coverage of the trial, wants to photograph pictures of fingerprints, allegedly those of accused Dina Rodrigues, found on a waybill at the scene, of the waybill itself, of a cardboard box that the state says her co-accused used to pose as deliverymen, and of pictures of the murder scene taken by police photographers.
Advocate Denzil Potgieter, for the state, argued that Independent was taking the wrong route in applying for permission, that the material did not fall under the access to information law and that the group’s newspapers wanted to publish for sensation and profit.
However, Waglay told Potgieter in a series of sharp exchanges that the exhibits were public documents.
The rest of the day was taken up with exhaustive cross-examination of police fingerprint expert Inspector Jan Bester, who told Rodrigues’s counsel John van der Berg how he sealed the waybill and box in evidence bags at the Norton home on the day of the killing in June last year.
He also dusted a steak knife found on the kitchen floor for prints and sealed it in an evidence bag, but handed it to the investigating officer after being told it was not connected to the killing.
Bester said he kept the other two bags in a locked cupboard in his office in central Cape Town overnight, and took them out again the next morning when he used RTX fumes to develop latent prints on the waybill.
He said the RTX leaves a red-brown mark when it reacts with a print. This mark disappears in time, though the last time he looked at the waybill, the prints were still there.
He said the RTX prints on the waybill did not match the first set of prints of Rodrigues that he was given.
Bester testified in his evidence in chief that he asked for a fresh set from Rodrigues because of the poor quality of the one he was initially given. — Sapa