CRI/APN/188/84
IN THE HIGH COURT OF LESOTHO
In the Application of
PITSO PHAKISO MAKHOZA 1st Applicant
MPHEU MASHEANE 2nd Applicant
ALBERT TANKISO LECHE 3rd Applicant
MOKHASI MLONGENI 4th Applicant
V
REX Respondent
REASONS FOR JUDGMENT
Filed by the Hon. Chief Justice Mr. Justice T.S. Cotran on the 13th day of February 1985
This is an application for bail pending appeal to the Court of Appeal from a Judgment of the High Court in its original jurisdiction in which the four applicants were convicted of assault with intent to murder and were sentenced to various periods of imprisonment.
On the 11th January 1985 I dismissed the application and stated that reasons will be filed later these now follow.
Mr Edeling's heads of argument in favour of granting bail run to eleven pages but the crux of it is that he says there are reasonable
prospects of success because of various alleged irregularities committed at the trial
There may well have been some irregularities but I am unable to say that any of them was serious as to give the applicants reasonable prospects of success The evidence showed that the complainant was shot assaulted and tortured over a period of several hours in a most shameful manner by the first applicant, the second third and fourth applicants
2
assisting him in various degrees No questions were directed to the Crown witnesses in cross-examination either on the identity of the applicants nor on what the complainant alleged had been actually done to him.
The applicants elected to keep silent at the trial There was in fact no defence whatsoever to the charge at the trial. What defence attorney and counsel did was not to challenge evidence of substance, but to rely upon, and then magnify trivia
As I intimated earlier bail pending appeal was refused.
CHIEF JUSTICE
13th February 1985
For Applicants Mr Edeling )
) with copy of Judgment
For Respondent Mr. Kabatsi )