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 )