STEPMUM ESCAPES DEATH SENTENCE

MBABANE – She escaped a hangman’s noose! A woman who brutally killed her six-year-old stepdaughter by strangling her with a rope around the neck escaped the death penalty yesterday.

Judge Nkululeko Hlophe found that there were no extenuating circumstances or factors which reduced the moral blameworthiness on Zodwa Dladla. 
Dladla, of Mahlangatsha, who is now 27 years old, was aged 21 when she committed the gruesome crime. Judge Hlophe decided to impose a custodial sentence of 22 years imprisonment.

The judge pointed out that before the advent of the Constitution, if the court failed to find extenuating circumstances, it was automatically called upon to return a capital punishment. 
Section 296 of the Criminal Procedure and Evidence Act provides that the sentence of death shall be imposed upon an offender convicted of murder without extenuating circumstances.

Penalty

However, Section 15(2) of the Constitution stipulates that the death penalty shall not be mandatory.  The court has discretion whether or not to impose the death penalty and such discretion has to be exercised judiciously

Acting in terms of Section 15(2) of the Constitution, which grants the court discretion on a sentence to impose, Judge Hlophe decided to issue a custodial sentence against Dladla.

He highlighted that some of the factors the court considered when passing sentence were that; she was still young, unsophisticated and uneducated, which might have made her fail to defend herself ably.

“Although there was no evidence, the court noted that this was a stepmother/stepdaughter relationship, such relation is inherently tenuous,” said Judge Hlophe.
Judge Hlophe stated that there was clear evidence that Dladla was responsible for the death but to date, she failed to tell the court why she killed her stepdaughter.

Rope

He said contrary to what she did during investigations, when she produced the rope she used to strangle the minor and recording a confession, when Dladla came to court she denied everything.

Judge Hlophe said; “She complicated everything when she came to court and denied everything despite the confession she recorded.”
In her confession, Dladla stated that she did not know why she killed her stepdaughter.

The court further stated that killing of children in the country was on the rise and it was the duty of the court to pass a sentence that would serve as a deterrent to other would-be offenders. The judge said to show that killing of children was on the rise in the country, he recently heard and decided a matter of Sandziso Lukhele, who sodomised and killed a young man.

Lukhele is the deaf and mute man who was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for murder and 18 years for sodomy.
Judge Hlophe said; “It is for this reason that the sentence I impose should be one that not only discourages would-be offenders from committing such crimes but one that also discourages members of the public from seeing the need to take the law into their hands by punishing offenders like the accused on their own if they were to consider the sentence I passed as not being satisfactory.”

The judge said although he must impose a stringent sentence in the matter owing to its seriousness, he was alive to the fact that such sentence should not be passed in anger.
He said this would avoid missing the middle line that a sentencing court should be able to observe in order to run away from its sentences being viewed as oppressive or unjust.

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