Durban — The Durban High Court has ruled that a confession by one of the women involved in the murder of Mark Buttle was inadmissible.
Buttle, of Newlands East, was stabbed to death in his car on February 25, 2018. His wife, Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos, 41, and her friend Charmaine Margaret Khumalo are on trial in court. The third accused, Dosantos’s lover Teagan Allison Brown, died in July before the trial could begin.
The three are alleged to have hatched and executed a plan to kill Buttle so they could allegedly cash in on his insurance policy. Dosantos was alleged to have been having an affair with Brown, 25. Buttle was allegedly lured to the scene by Dosantos under the pretext of working through marital issues.
The trial got under way on November 6. However, the State introduced a confession and pointing out statement, by Khumalo. Her Legal Aid attorney Musa Chiliza objected to the admissibility of this statement, saying that she had done it under undue influence to the effect that she was promised that she would be made a section 204 witness if she came clean. Chiliza argued that the statement was inadmissible because Khumalo had not been made a section 204 witness. The defence opposed this and a trial within a trial got under way.
The court heard that Khumalo made her confession with the police in the presence of a senior public prosecutor (SPP). The court heard that Khumalo, before she made the confession and pointing out, interpreted the words “the truth shall set you free” as a promise.
“Here we had a case where the investigating officer knew who to arrest but did not have enough and was doing all he could within the ambit of the law to get more, he went the extra mile with the involvement of the SPP. We are arguing that the accused was co-operative from the beginning but what she was saying was not enough. He (the investigating officer) had to take further steps; it’s this further step that rendered exerting undue influence on the mind of the accused,” said Chiliza on Wednesday (Wednesday).
Senior state prosecutor advocate Khatija Essack argued that Khumalo was never promised that she would be a section 204 witness, adding that if that had been the case why would she have remained silent about this even during her bail application? Essack said that the SPP had no prior knowledge of the merits of the case, adding that the SPP’s utterances were a figure of speech and spiritual in context in order to appeal to her conscience.
“We are dealing with an accused wanting some indemnity and she has not questioned anything about this all this time. This is corroborated by the accused’s testimony that no promises were made to her. Something hit her conscience, here we are talking about an entire day with police where she was calm and not crying. If she was under undue influence her behaviour did not reflect that, at the time she was doing that there was no promise or undue influence,” she said.
In his ruling, Acting Judge Murray Pitman said it was not appropriate at this stage for the court to provide full reasons for its decisions, and these will be fully dealt with at the finalisation of the matter.
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