Witnesses lied, claims Rob Packham in bid to overturn murder conviction

Wife murderer Rob Packham has accused state witnesses of lying and intentionally misleading the Cape Town High Court.

Judge Elizabeth Steyn, who convicted the Constantia businessman of murdering his wife of 30 years, Gill, heard Packham's application for leave to appeal on Wednesday.

The 58-year-old, who has been sentenced to 22 years, wants to appeal against his convictions for murder and defeating the ends of justice.  

Steyn found that he killed Gill, loaded her body into the boot of her car and set it alight at Diep River railway station in February 2018.

Delivering sentence earlier this month, the judge said: "The accused methodically, brazenly and clinically went about in an attempt to obliterate any proof of his cowardly deed.

"The actions of the accused prevented his family, including his daughters, from getting closure."

But Packham's attorney, Ben Mathewson, told Steyn on Wednesday that she had "misdirected" herself by accepting the evidence of all state witnesses.  

"It is respectfully submitted that the honourable court misdirected itself in ... finding that all state witnesses were honest, reliable and credible, in circumstances where certain witnesses demonstrated themselves to be untruthful, wholly unreliable and intent on misleading the court," argued Mathewson.

He said Steyn had misdirected herself in "accepting and attaching weight to all the state evidence without critically evaluating each of the individual components of the evidence, in circumstances where the probative value of certain ... state evidence was such that it ought not to have carried weight against [Packham]".

Mathewson sought to poke holes in witness Paul Gray’s testimony. Gray identified Packham as "the white man" he saw behind the wheel of a green BMW, similar to the one Gill owned and in which her charred body was found. Mathewson said Gray's evidence should have been rejected as "unreliable".

The application also cast doubt on Keanan Thomas's testimony that he saw a light-skinned male leaving the scene of the burning car in a white SUV. He also pointed out Packham from a selection of photos during a police identity parade.

The attorney said Steyn should not have found that the parade was "conducted in an objective and fair manner, which rendered them acceptable and reliable in circumstances where there were significant irregularities in the respective processes and conduct in conflict with the authoritative guidelines laid down by the courts".

Mathewson said Steyn should not have attached any weight to the evidence relating to the analysis of cellphone data linking Packham to the scenes that Gray and Thomas mentioned, among other things.

After cross-examination, Mathewson said the "evidence was neutral in regard to the movements of [Packham] and did not only link him to areas contended for by the prosecution and did not only link him to the areas where, on his version, he had been".  

Prosecutor Susan Galloway opposed the application on the basis that all the arguments Packham's counsel raised had already been considered by the court.

Galloway also argued that even if some of the evidence were to carry less weight, which she did not concede, the totality of the circumstantial evidence supported the only reasonable inference that Packham committed the crimes.

Galloway said should Gray's identification fall away, Thomas's identification was strong and corroborated by the details of the vehicle he observed. She said Packham's version of events was not supported by the objective evidence of the cellphone data.

Steyn will rule on the application next week.