Former Bafana Bafana goalkeeper Senzo Meyiwa. (Photo by Lefty Shivambu/Gallo Images/Getty Images)
A defence lawyer in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial argued in the Pretoria high court on Tuesday that bullet evidence from the October 2014 crime scene should not have been placed in a brown envelope but rather a transparent forensics bag.
Defence advocate Charles Mnisi said none of the photographed evidence from state witness Colonel Thobeka Mhlahlo, who was on the stand on Tuesday, showed the bullet where it was alleged to be found, while the exhibit of the sealed envelope was not proof that it contained the bullet evidence.
“Do you know why it is important that the evidence bag is transparent? So that we can see the evidence inside it; where is the bullet there?” Mnisi said in his cross-examination of Mhlahlo, to which she responded: “Inside the envelope inside the forensic bag.”
Mhlahlo confirmed that she had discovered the bullet in a spot where two other officers had failed to locate it a day before.
The court has previously heard that because the people present in the house were not considered suspects, police did not secure the scene to prevent contamination.
On Tuesday, Mhahlo testified that because the bullet did not go through the kitchen door, she searched the kitchen cupboard for the projectile.
She was responsible for putting together a photo album and documenting the crime scene on 15 October 2014, the day after Meyiwa was shot and killed at the Vosloorus, Gauteng, family home of his girlfriend, singer Kelly Khumalo, in what the state says was a botched robbery.
The forensics expert who is responsible for crime scene management testified that police handled evidence according to procedure, despite a grilling from Mnisi who questioned whether placing the exhibits in an envelope before the forensics bag was procedural.
When Mnisi asked whether the exhibit bags were tested, Mhlahlo explained that her job was to preserve the crime scene and not contamination testing on forensic bags.
Mnisi wrapped up his cross-examination by putting it to Mhlahlo that the bullet in question was planted — amounting to scene tampering.
Without challenging this assertion, Mhlahlo maintained that she had “no idea, but at the time that I was there, nothing was planted”.
She insisted that she had nothing to do with evidence packaging and that it was all done by a previous witness, forensics investigator Sergeant Thabo Mosia.
“I put it to you what you say is that forensic bags are transparent, yet all that is depicted there is something in an envelope. I don’t see any bullet there,” Mnisi said, adding his assertion that the bullet evidence in question was planted.
“That explains why Mosia never said anything about the fragment found next to the bullet,” he said.
Another defence lawyer, Zithulele Nxumalo, also cast doubt on the integrity of the police’s evidence collection, questioning why, for example, the wood fragment from the door was not placed in evidence or how it ended up next to the bullet fragment.
“I put it to you that you did not collect it as evidence because it was not there,” he said, to which Mhlahlo responded: “I don’t agree with you.”
On Tuesday, Nxumalo said on 9 February 2015, police had gone to look for a projectile that matches the firearm allegedly found in the possession of one of the accused, Mthobisi Mncube, who was arrested for an unrelated matter that same month.
The firearm he was found with was later tested for links to Meyiwa’s murder, but last week police officer Mandla Masondo, who arrested Mncube, told the court that the gun in question was not linked to the Meyiwa murder.
The five accused in the trial have pleaded not guilty to charges of premeditated murder, attempted murder, armed robbery, illegal possession of a firearm and the illegal possession of ammunition.