Robber wins appeal without judges setting foot in court

The Supreme Court of Appeal has taken the unusual step of granting an appeal without even hearing the case.

Robber Zuluboy Zulu‚ who was jailed for 30 years in 2008‚ was granted leave to appeal against his sentence to the Pretoria High Court.

Judge Malcolm Wallis‚ who was supposed to hear Zulu’s appeal on February 16‚ said he and the other four judges who were scheduled to join him on the bench‚ had agreed a hearing was superfluous.

“A reading of the record and the heads of argument made it clear ... that the appeal had to succeed‚” he said.

“The court has accordingly exercised the power it now has ... to dispose of the appeal without the need to hear an oral argument.

“It is appropriate for us to exercise that power in the interests of the expeditious disposal of the appeal.”

Zulu and another man hijacked a car in 2006 in Arcadia‚ Pretoria‚ and stole a handbag from one of the occupants.

They were convicted in Pretoria Regional Court of two counts of robbery and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment for each.

But Wallis said the magistrate should have treated the hijacking and the handbag theft as a “single criminal enterprise” and not two incidents.

“It should have been plain to the magistrate that this ... resulted in a manifestly excessive sentence‚” he said.

“The theft of the handbag added nothing to the moral culpability of Mr Zulu and did not justify any significant increase in the sentence to be imposed upon him.

“The problem could have been overcome by treating the two robbery counts as one for the purposes of the sentence or making the two sentences run concurrently.”

The magistrate also failed to take into account the fact that Zulu had been in custody for nearly three years before he was sentenced.

TMG Digital/Sunday Times