Minnies gang freed after botch-up of note
The bungle boys were at it again in a case that resembles a B-grade movie
HEN YOU appear in court before serious-faced and impressively robed judges, you might think they lack a sense of humour or understanding of popular culture. But this week, deciding a case officially referred to as Minnies against the State, five judges of the Supreme Court of Appeal indicated they knew a great deal more about movies than you might expect.
In the second paragraph of its judgment the Appeal Court described the facts as “the stuff of a low-grade thriller”.
Did they have any idea of how right they were? Let’s start with the people and the plot. The main State witness was Alfred Laidlaw – a good beginning – who gave evidence against the promisingly named accused, Mark Minnies, Iekeraam Hini, Mark Adams and Linford Pilot.
Laidlaw knew Minnies but hadn’t seen him for many years until, in July 2006, Minnies told Laidlaw he was looking for a buyer for counterfeit money.
Minnies set up a meeting during which the gang showed Laidlaw a counterfeit bank note and offered to sell him a large quantity of similar fake notes at half their face value.
WAfter the meeting, Laidlaw contacted the police, who set a lunchtime trap in the car park of the Good Hope Centre in Cape Town. Laidlaw took along a police agent posing as a potential buyer of the fake notes.
Things started off well. Watched by hidden police members ready to pounce once the transaction was complete, the four unwitting gang members showed Laidlaw and his side-kick a sports bag containing 3 648 counterfeit R100 notes.
But then the Eddie Murphy effect kicked in: at the critical moment, the gang saw a metro police vehicle and panicked. They sped off using one of the vehicles in which they had arrived and the police took off after them.
Following a high-speed car chase – you can imagine the details for yourself – they were eventually stopped and arrested. As I was reading the decision I decided, just for fun, to Google “Minnies”, “counterfeit notes” and “appeal”.
A surprising number of movies turned up in the results, including one that the court might well have had in mind: Minnie Driver starring in a 2001 movie called High Heels and Low Lifes. It involves a nurse and her best friend who “suddenly find themselves battling wits with seasoned criminals” when they decide to blackmail the culprits of a bank robbery rather than reporting the crime to the police.
The gang don’t want to be outsmarted by mere women and resort to dirty tricks, threats of violence and, yes, counterfeit money to throw the women off course. Just to make it more pointed, the story also stars a couple of bungling detectives.
One review dismissed this Britflick as “comedy with some awkward serious moments” and it is to these serious moments in the original court case that we must now turn.
The Minnies gang were tried in the specialised commercial crime court in Bellville, charged with “unlawfully tendering counterfeit money” and were convicted and sentenced to jail.
They lost their appeal to the High Court but were given leave to appeal further against their convictions only.
You might imagine that because they were tried in a court specially set up to deal with commercial crime the prosecution would get it right, right?
But you would be wrong. That’s because this isn’t the usual case involving counterfeit money: all parties involved, on both sides of the transaction, knew the notes were forged.
But the four were charged under a section of the law that, according to the interpretation of the Appeal Court, makes it an offence to “tender” or offer fake money as though it were real.
Once the court made this ruling about the interpretation of the section, the fact that everyone involved in the Minnies case was fully aware the bank notes were fake was “fatal to the charge”.
The five judges held that the four should not have been convicted on the charges put to them and that their appeal should succeed.
The court added that the gang clearly appeared to have been involved in counterfeiting activities and that it was a matter of “surprise and concern” that they had not been charged with a statutory offence that could have stuck. But this the State did not do and, as a result of this mistake, in a tale starring a bungling prosecution as much as bungling detectives, the accused have all now gone free.
carmelrickard.posterous.com