Cape Town - Convicted wife killer Jason Rohde will learn next week whether his Western Cape High Court application for an extension of his bail, pending his appeal in the Constitutional Court in his bid to avoid prison, has been successful or not.
The High Court on Thursday postponed judgment on the matter to Thursday next week.
Rohde, who is currently out on bail and has yet to spend a day behind bars, had asked the Western Cape High Court to extend his bail, pending another appeal in the Constitutional Court.
NPA spokesperson Eric Ntabazalila has said the State will be opposing the bail application. Court papers show that one of the grounds on which the State is opposing bail is the fact that Rohde has been convicted of murder.
The State does not believe Rohde has made a decent argument for a bail extension, and has also said that it would not be in the interests of justice to extend bail after the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) upheld his conviction.
In October the SCA dismissed Rohde’s appeal against his conviction for the murder and defeating the ends of justice, but reduced his sentence from 20 years’ imprisonment to 15.
In that appeal, which was heard by five judges, Rohde claimed that the State’s investigation of the forensic evidence was not objective or thorough.
The State also does not believe that Rohde will succeed with his application for leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court.
Last week Rohde lost his application at the high court to get Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe to recuse herself from his bail case.
Rohde brought the application for recusal after he discovered that Judge Salie-Hlophe, was also the judge deciding his bail application.
On November 8, 2018, Judge Salie-Hlophe sentenced him to an effective 20 years’ imprisonment, 18 years for the murder conviction and five for the conviction of defeating the ends of justice.
Of the five years, three were ordered to run concurrently with the first sentence.
That case centred on whether Rohde murdered his wife and staged her death as a suicide, or whether whether there was a reasonable possibility that she might have actually killed herself.
mwangi.githahu@inl.co.za