Tearful Momberg in the dock
Alleged racist ranter has ‘existing mental condition’, but can tell right from wrong.
Alleged racist ranter Vicky Momberg has an “existing mental condition” but she can still distinguish right from wrong, the Randburg Magistrate’s Court was told yesterday.
Momberg is facing four counts of crimen injuria after allegedly shouting racial insults at black police officers after she was the subject of a “smash and grab” and attempted hijacking attack in February last year.
Much of her shouting and screaming at the officers was captured on video. She has pleaded not guilty and claimed she was traumatised and was “lashing out” at everyone she came into contact with after the incident.
Prosecutor Yusuf Baba told the court that a psychiatrist who had examined Momberg last year found that although she had an existing mental condition – which was not revealed in court – she was in a position to distinguish right from wrong.
After she gave evidence yesterday, Momberg’s lawyer, Joseph Davidowitz, argued that while the psychiatrist’s report indicated that although she could have known that what she was doing was wrong, she may have been unable to stop herself from doing it.
Asked whether she agreed with the report’s inference that she was criminally responsible for the racist slurs she directed at at least four police officers that night, Momberg said she did not agree.
The court also heard yesterday that Momberg had claimed she did not recall most of the events and had been assisted in this regard by the video and the accounts of witnesses. She did, however, concede after watching the video she understood what she had done was wrong.
“I wasn’t in a state to understand what someone else was trying to do,” she said tearfully, after being asked why, on several occasions, she refused help from the black officers who were trying to assist her.
It also emerged from cross-examination that Momberg had a history of mistrusting the justice system. She testified that she had on numerous occasions reported crimes against her which had never been prosecuted.
“Police don’t like to prosecute,” she said.
However, Baba referred to a similar case in Durban in which Momberg was charged and acquitted of crimen injuria.
Momberg had allegedly asked to be helped by anyone except a black person while she was seeking assistance at a Durban police station in 2006. She made several claims in her defence about the state’s evidence against her, including that parts of the original video footage taken that night were missing from the state’s evidence during the Equality Court proceedings.