The drunken driving trial of Pretoria high court judge Nkola Motata has been postponed until July 2 2008 when it will proceed for a full month.
”What we have decided is to place the matter in the manner in which matters are placed on the high court role. We have now placed it for a full month of the court from the 2nd of July,” said magistrate Desmond Nair at the Johannesburg magistrate’s court on Tuesday.
The postponement came after Nair turned down an application by the defence to temporarily block the court from listening to recordings of Motata’s alleged drunken diatribe.
Last week Nair ruled that five recordings of Motata after his car accident could be heard as part of a trial-within-a-trial to determine their admissibility.
Speaking after the postponement, defence advocate Danie Dorfling said the defence would now proceed with an application to have the ruling reviewed by the high court during the period of postponement.
The magistrate earlier said he would have to prevent the defence from making the case obstructive.
”The question that I must answer is when can a party rely on these provisions of review? What is clear is that this is not an absolute right. The accused does not have a free hand to do so …[allowing the application] will amount to an abuse of the process of review.”
Nair said there had been considerable delays in the matter and that trial dates had been postponed.
”There have been no fewer than five applications I have had to give rulings on,” he said.
”The bulk of the [court transcript] so far has been made up of argument. We have not gone through even 50% of the state witnesses.
On January 6, Motata crashed his Jaguar into the house of Richard Baird. Baird is a state witness.
The court has heard that Baird made recordings at the scene of the accident with his cellphone.
Motata is facing charges of driving under the influence of alcohol with an alternate charge of reckless or negligent driving, and defeating the ends of justice, with an alternative charge of resisting arrest. – Sapa