Dippenaar loses bid to take appeal to Supreme Court

The Windhoek High Court last week dismissed an application by convicted murderer Jandré Dippenaar for leave to appeal his convictions and sentence to the Supreme Court, finding he had no reasonable prospects of success.

The ruling effectively closes the door on Dippenaar’s attempt to challenge his six murder convictions and prison sentence in the Supreme Court, unless he pursues any further remedies available in law.

Dippenaar is the first person in Namibian legal history to be convicted and sentenced for murder on the basis of dolus eventualis, rather than culpable homicide, in a case arising from a car accident.

On Friday, judges Naomi Shivute and Boas Usiku also refused Dippenaar's application for condonation after he filed his application for leave to appeal outside the prescribed time limit.

Dippenaar was driving the vehicle that was involved in a fatal crash at the coast in which six people died in December 2014.

In 2024, he was convicted in the Swakopmund Regional Court on six counts of murder, reckless driving and driving without a licence.

The regional court handed down a fine of N$8 000 or two years' imprisonment for reckless driving, a fine of N$2 000 or three months' imprisonment for driving without a licence, and 15 years' imprisonment on the six murder counts, which were taken together for purposes of sentencing.

Last week, The High Court judges found there were no grounds to interfere with the trial court’s findings and that the punishment imposed was justified.

"We have no reasonable doubt that the applicant was properly convicted of the charges preferred against him. The sentences imposed on the applicant were also appropriate under the circumstances", the ruling states.

Guilty sentence

Dippenaar's appeal against both conviction and sentence was previously dismissed by the High Court.

Dissatisfied with that outcome, Dippenaar sought leave to appeal to the Supreme Court. However, the judges noted that his application was filed 12 days outside the 14-day period prescribed by the Criminal Procedure Act.

In an affidavit, his legal team attributed the delay to uncertainty regarding the correct legal procedure and the interpretation of provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act and High Court rules governing criminal appeals.

The court rejected that explanation, finding that the relevant provisions were clear and that counsel had failed to properly acquaint himself with the applicable law. "It seems clear that counsel regrettably failed to acquaint himself with the amended provisions", Shivute said.

Although the court accepted that Dippenaar himself should not necessarily be blamed for his lawyer's failure and allowed argument on the merits, it ultimately found that he failed to meet the requirements for condonation.

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