Fred's family want to sue

2007-12-05 13:02

Johannesburg - The family of Fred van der Vyver, the acquitted accused in the Inge Lotz murder case, intends suing the State for his wrongful prosecution, The Times online reported on Wednesday.

Van der Vyver's father, Louis, a farmer in the Eastern Cape, said the next logical step would be an investigation into the actions of the detectives responsible for presenting controversial fingerprint evidence.

"I think it's an integrity problem," he told The Times.

He said the family planned to sue the state for wrongful prosecution.

"Having endured what we did, we've got a tremendous sensitivity about what this could do to any other person. We would like to do whatever we can to address the (problems in the) system and prevent or limit such a thing happening to anybody else," he said.

The fingerprint evidence, intended to destroy Van der Vyver's alibi, was submitted by the police.

The police testified that fingerprints of Van der Vyver had been found on the cover of a DVD that Lotz rented on the afternoon of her murder.

Judge Deon van Zyl rejected the fingerprint evidence, along with all other aspects of the State's case, and acquitted Van der Vyver last week.

Van der Vyver's family flew in US fingerprint expert Pat Wertheim, who testified that the fingerprint could not have been taken from a DVD cover and was almost certainly taken from a drinking glass.

Prosecutors rejected the possibility that the police had mislabelled a fingerprint taken from a glass as having been taken from the DVD cover.

- SAPA