Coffin case duo’s sentences altered
MURDER ATTEMPT: TIME OF SUSPENDED PORTION CUT
Convicts’ counsel cited correction as irregularity to be part of appeal application.
Middelburg farm foremen Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Jackson, who were sentenced to long prison terms for forcing a man into a coffin and threatening to set him alight, had to be resentenced yesterday, because of an error in their original sentences.
Judge Segopotje Mphahlele last month sentenced Oosthuizen, 29, to 16 years’ imprisonment of which five years were suspended for eight years and Jackson to 19 years’ imprisonment, of which five years were suspended for eight years.
However, because the Criminal Procedure Act does not allow a prison term to be suspended for more than five years, the judge yesterday altered the pair’s sentences to reflect that a portion of their sentences will now only be suspended for five years.
Oosthuizen’s attorney, Marius Coertze, said the corrected sentences, which were handed down in the High Court in Pretoria yesterday, had no effect on Oosthuizen and Jackson’s effective sentences of 11 and 14 years’ imprisonment. He said they viewed the judge’s correction of the sentences as an irregularity that would form part of their application for leave to appeal before the Supreme Court of Appeal.
The pair were arrested after a video went viral that they made while forcing Victor Mlotshwa into a coffin and threatening to set him alight or to put a snake in the coffin. They were convicted of attempting to murder, kidnapping and intimidating Mlotshwa and of assaulting him and another man, Delton Sithole, in separate incidents on the same day in August 2016. Jackson was also convicted of defeating the ends of justice for burning the coffin.
The pair claimed they only wanted to frighten Mlotshwa for stealing copper cables, but he said he was attacked for no reason while hitch-hiking to town. –