Van Breda lawyers 'dance' in court

Henri van Breda looked on yesterday as his defence team illustrated in court how an alleged attacker, and not Van Breda himself, inflicted "parallel, uniform and equidistant" cuts on his arm.

Holding a ruler as a prop for the knife, defence lawyer Piet Botha asked his colleague Matthys Combrink to take part in the demonstration, which had the victim holding the attacker's wrist as he flicked the knife against his arm.

But forensic pathologist Jacobus Dempers wasn't convinced. Asked by Botha if this was a plausible explanation for Van Breda's cuts, Dempers responded:

"No, because they are perfectly parallel and equidistant.

"You do it like on television - a perfectly controlled dance. But the chances of those four scratches coming from a fight in real life? In my professional opinion 'no'. You never see that in fights."

He then told Judge Siraj Desai: "I can show you pictures in a book of self-inflicted wounds. They look exactly like this. The chances that they could look like this [if he had been attacked] are negligible, unless he was held completely dead still."

Dempers also said it was not possible that the knife had stayed in Van Breda's flesh and that Van Breda had to pull it out of himself, as alleged in his plea statement.

He detailed an experiment in which he held the flesh of a pig completely still. The 50-gram knife stayed in for a maximum of three seconds, he said, but any movement made it fall out immediately.

The pathologist provided poignant detail of how Van Breda's mother, Teresa, and brother, Rudi, may have tried to fend off their attacker with their hands before being hit on the head with an axe.

"The deceased all had similar wounds - lacerations, skull injuries and incised injuries. Rudi van Breda and Teresa van Breda also had what may have been defensive wounds on their thumbs from trying to shield themselves from their attacker," he said.

In contrast, Van Breda had no defensive wounds.

Asked by Botha if it was possible Van Breda's wounds were not self-inflicted, Dempers said scientists don't like to exclude something flat out, but a good comparison would be: "If you ask if someone could survive a stab to the heart, I might say: 'Yes, but only if he was attacked right outside the operating theatre and a surgeon was right there ready to operate on him.'''