Third man wrongly jailed for killing cop expected to walk

JUST weeks after the Constitutional Court ordered the release of two men wrongfully convicted and jailed for the murder of a cop, a third man is heading to the same court seeking his freedom.

Thembekile Molaudzi hopes to join Boswell Mhlongo and Alfred Nkosi, who walked out of Pretoria Central Prison last month by order of the Constitutional Court, having served 10 years behind bars.

The three men were sentenced to life in prison for the August 2002 killing of a police officer in Mothutlung, North West.

They were among a group of seven men accused of gunning down the policeman outside his house, in front of his daughter.

But Mhlongo, Nkosi and, now, Molaudzi maintained they were innocent.

They said they had been falsely accused by one of the other men, who concocted the story under pressure from police in exchange for a reward, they said.

After unsuccessful appeals to the high court and Supreme Court of Appeal, Mhlongo and Nkosi persuaded the Constitutional Court that their trial was unfair.

They argued that the trial court had relied on an untested admission by a co-accused to convict them.

Mhlongo and Nkosi were helped by fellow inmates studying law through the Uni- versity of South Africa.

The inmates drafted their legal documents but the court later appointed human rights advocate Donrich Jordaan to represent them.

Last month, when ordering the release of Mhlongo and Nkosi, Chief Justice Mogoeng Mogoeng noted that there was a third man in the same situation and invited Molaudzi to bring his case to the Constitutional Court on the same basis.

His previous bids had led Molaudzi to “believe that all hope to attain justice for me was lost”, according to an affidavit filed at the Constitutional Court.

Molaudzi argued that he was unfairly tried when the court accepted the admission by a co-accused implicating him without giving him the chance to challenge it.

“Every accused person has the right to a fair trial, which includes the right to challenge evidence,” he said.

National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Velekhaya Mgobhozi said the state would not oppose Molaudzi’s application.

There is no way of knowing how many former convicts have been cleared after serving time in jail because neither the Department of Justice and Correctional Services nor the National Prosecuting Authority keep statistics on convictions overturned on appeal.

A check of the 115 criminal appeals heard by the Supreme Court of Appeal since the beginning of 2013 revealed that 41 of those led to convictions and sentences being set aside.

One of the other men . . . concocted the story under pressure from police