The Pretoria High Court has ordered the early release on parole this week of two convicted wife killers and a man who battered to death his mistress’s husband.
Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann dismissed an urgent application by Correctional Services Minister Ngconde Balfour to ”clarify” an earlier court order that millionaire businessman Barend du Toit and fellow convicted murderers Piet Lombaard and Deon Pistorius be released on parole after serving less than half of their lengthy jail sentences.
Victor Sepeng, the chairperson of the correctional supervision and parole board at the Pretoria Central Prison, where all three are inmates, said in documents before the court that the judge was effectively ”ousting” the function of the parole review board and should not have reviewed and set aside the board’s decisions.
The commissioner of Correctional Services had, a few days before the hearing, referred the parole board’s refusal to grant the three parole to the parole review board, despite being aware of the pending court application.
Du Toit was in 1997 sentenced to 28 years in jail after battering his wife, Joyce Anastasia, to death for insurance money. He maintained he was innocent and that his wife had been murdered by two unidentified intruders.
Lombard was in 1999 sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for battering and kicking his frail, sickly wife Henda to death while Pistorius was in 1997 sentenced to 25 years imprisonment for using a baseball bat to murder his mistress’s husband, Andries Loggerenberg, before setting his body alight.
Bertelsmann said the commissioner had never applied to be joined as a party to the proceedings and did not favour the court with any reasons for his decision, or why he had deemed it necessary to refer the parole board’s decision to the review board.
He said although he accepted that the commissioner did not intend to ”upstage” the court, it would have been preferable for him to take the court into his confidence.
In the absence of any reasons from the commissioner and the common cause fact that the parole board had failed to consider the three men’s cases properly, it would amount to the perpetuation of an injustice to allow any postponement pending a decision of the review board, the judge added.
He said his order that the men — who had all served more than one third of their sentences and were eligible for parole — should be released had substituted the parole board’s decision and there was therefore no decision that could be referred to the review board.
The order was also subject to the determination of appropriate conditions by Correctional Services authorities. – Sapa