Lower court criticised for shoddy work

A High Court judge issued a stern warning to an Outapi magistrate this month for defective legal proceedings in which a man was sentenced to one-year imprisonment for the theft of two tyres worth N$4 000.The scolding is contained in an automatic review judgment issued by High Court northern local division judge Johanna Salionga, in agreement with acting judge Duard Kesslau.Salionga found that the trial proceedings were “tainted by irregularities of a serious nature which vitiates proceedings. Consequently, the whole proceedings, including the purported sentence, fall to be set aside.”But this judgment came too late for Machenje Joseph, who was sent to prison in July 2020 and had already been freed by the time the review was delivered.Salionga’s judgment highlighted that in addition to the defective legal proceedings, the magistrate delayed the automatic review proceedings by replying to the High Court’s queries only months later.Mere academic exercise“Disappointingly, by the time of writing this judgment, the accused completed serving his term of imprisonment, and it will not be fair to remit the matter.”“The delay in answering a query directed to the magistrate almost a year ago deprived the accused of the protection that the urgent review mechanism was designed for. Instead of that, the review of this matter has become a mere academic exercise,” the review said.Salionga stressed the need to put mechanisms in place “to ensure that magistrates treat the answering of review queries as a matter of urgency so that instances such as the present one do not recur”.The Outapi magistrate whose judgment was criticised has not been identified.Shoddy paperworkAutomatic review judgments involve a High Court judge reviewing the lawfulness of a lower court’s process by which a decision was arrived at. If a judge finds the process was flawed, the conviction and sentence can be set aside or amended.Among the flaws in the proceedings under review were that the magistrate’s questions to Joseph about his guilty plea were “just too technical for the undefended accused”.Another issue identified was shoddy paperwork.Salionga stressed that while it was on record that the accused had pleaded guilty, the judgment was not entered into the record nor on a J15 form as required.Moreover, she found that although the handwritten record of the proceedings is mum on whether the accused confirmed a prior conviction, the typed record showed that he did do so.“I must remark here that the magistrate’s court is a court of record and any alternations made on the record amounts to fraud.”

Lower court criticised for shoddy work

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Namibian Sun 2022-07-07

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Lower court criticised for shoddy work

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Namibian Sun 2022-07-07

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