NPA appeals on precedent

The director of public prosecutions (DPP) has been granted leave to appeal a sentence of a caution and discharge imposed by a magistrate on a Vanderbijlpark man who shot his son dead in March this year.

Coert Johannes Kruger, 51, apparently mistook Coert Johannes Kruger Junior for a burglar and shot him dead on his grandmother’s house roof.

Kruger had reacted to an alarm activation at his mother’s house and met a guard from the security company, that had called him. They saw a person on the roof and Kruger shot at him, only to realise later it was his son.

Kruger pleaded guilty to the charge of murder. He was released on a warning and would serve no jail time.

The death of his son was punishment enough, said magistrate Robert Button.

National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) Gauteng spokesperson Phindi Mjonondwane said on Thursday the director of public prosecutions in Pretoria viewed the sentence of caution and discharge as “shockingly inappropriate”. Mjonondwane said the DPP had successfully applied for leave to appeal the sentence.

Mjonondwane said the NPA was of the view that Button committed a serious misdirection by not referring to the most recent sentence in June, where under similar circumstances a father was sentenced to 10 years, wholly suspended for five years.

Last year, Sibusiso Emmanuel Tshabalala shot and killed his son, Luyanda, after he knocked on the window of the car in which his father was asleep. Tshabalala thought he was being robbed.

“The great disparity in the two sentences under similar circumstances, both in the Gauteng division, does not augur well for legal precedent.

“The principle of stare decisis is sacrosanct in that the law expounded in one case should be followed in deciding cases with similar material facts, hence the NPA could not leave this unchallenged,” said Mjonondwane. – Caxton News Service