Law- Thompson

The prosecution case at the trial

Three members of d'Andra's family gave evidence that after her absence from her home was noticed a search of the surrounding area for her began shortly after 9.00 pm. During the search they saw the appellant hiding under a tree nearby, and when he was seen he left where he was hiding and ran down the beach. The brother of d'Andra ran after him, but fell on the beach and failed to catch him. Members of the search party found blood and faeces on a rock on the beach and d'Andra's pants were also found nearby.

Evidence was given by police officers of going to the appellant's home, which was not far from d'Andra's home, in the early morning of 19 December 1993 and bringing him from his home to Port Elizabeth police station. It will be necessary to describe the evidence of the police officers in greater detail at a later stage in this judgment, but at this point their evidence can be summarised as follows. In the police station at 9.00 am the appellant told Det Sgt Warrican that he had 'thrown body of d'Andra into sea at La Pompe'. The appellant then made further similar oral admissions to the police and between 11.45 am and 12.30 pm, after caution, he made a written statement which he dictated to Det Sgt Warrican and then signed. The police evidence was that no police officer had assaulted the appellant and no police officer had made any promise to him or offered any inducement to him to make a confession.

The defence case at the trial

The appellant went into the witness-box before the jury to give evidence in his own defence. He said he had nothing to do with the disappearance of d'Andra, he had not sexually assaulted her, he had not thrown her into the sea, and he had nothing to do with her death. He said that he was very seriously ill-treated by police officers from the time they arrived at his home in the early hours of 19 December and he described very grave assaults, which included blows with a shovel, assault on his...