Lion murder trial 'not fair'
2005-01-24 21:59
Phalaborwa - Lion-murder accused Mark Scott-Crossley was being denied a fair trial because his legal team was not allowed to have the victim's finger analysed, Phalaborwa Circuit Court heard on Monday.
Prosecutor Ivy Tsenga had neglected to provide the raw data of the State's DNA tests, despite numerous requests, submitted Scott-Crossley's defence counsel, Johann Engelbrecht SC, at the start of the trial.
It was the partial remains of the finger - found by police in a lions' den near Hoedspruit - that enabled the identification of the victim as Nelson Chisale, 41, Tsenga told the court.
Even though Chisale was "devoured" by lions, there was enough of the finger left to obtain a fingerprint, but she emphasised this was not the sole basis of the State's case.
It would also rely on "eye-witnesses and accomplices".
While Engelbrecht conceded the State had provided him with the final DNA report, he wanted the information outlining the full process used to reach its conclusions.
Couldn't verify opinions
This was the reason he had advised Scott-Crossley, 37, not to make "the normal formal admissions" in an explanation of his plea of not guilty.
"We were not placed in a position to verify the correctness of the experts' opinions".
Chisale was buried at his birthplace at Maboloka village, in Brits, North West, in March last year after the High Court denied an application to stay his funeral to enable the defence to conduct forensic tests on his remains.
The court found that his family's right to dignity outweighed his alleged murderers' rights to a fair trial.
Judge George Maluleke ruled on Monday that the issue be dealt with when the time came for expert testimony.
Scott-Crossley's co-accused, Richard "Doctor" Mathebula, 41, and Simon Mathebula, 43, who are not related to each other, have also pleaded not guilty to the murder.
However, both explained why they were doing so.
Last hours alive
It was in those explanations of pleas that the court heard about Chisale's last hours alive.
It's claimed he was beaten with a panga, tied to a tree then shoved to the ground, kicked in the head and threatened with a rifle before being loaded onto the back of a bakkie and fed to the lions.
The attack was for going to Scott-Crossley's farm to collect pots he had left there after being dismissed.
Scott-Crossley allegedly ordered Richard Mathebula and Robert
Mnisi - an employee of his who has since turned State
witness - to throw Chisale over the fence into the lion camp, but "they couldn't do it as the deceased was very heavy", the court heard.
He allegedly warned both men they would face the same fate if they ever spoke of what had happened.
Finger found in camp
The first witness on Monday was superintendent Ian van der Nest, a crime scene investigator, who said he found blood in the back of the bakkie allegedly used to take Chisale to Mokwalo White Lion Project, near Hoedspruit.
In the lion camp itself, he found blood stains on the ground, a shaft of long bones, bits of a checked shirt, material ripped from a pair of khaki trousers, a skull with no mandible and fragments of rib, vertebrae, pelvic girdle and a finger.
Anti-poaching guard Forget Tsako Ndlovu, stationed at the gate to the Scott-Crossley property, identified the shirt as the one Chisale was wearing when he went on to the farm on the day of his death, January 31 2004.
He knew the bakkie as the vehicle belonging to Mark Scott-Crossley, he testified.
Never found human bones before
Albertus Mostert, who owned the Mokwalo camp at the time of the incident, told the court he and his labourers had cleaned the 20ha lions' camp of bones left over from their food once a month and never before come across human remains.
The skull police found there was nothing like those of the domestic pigs and game usually fed to the lions.
It was too small, it was the skull of a human being, he testified.
- SAPA