The office of the National Director for Public Prosecutions will have to cough up more than R500,000 after a mix-up saw four men sent to jail when they were in fact out on warning.
The men, from Somerset East, were awarded damages of R150,000 each in the Eastern Cape High Court in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown) last week.
Although judge Clive Plasket found the conditions of their detention to have been adequate, in that they were provided with three meals a day and mattresses to sleep on, he said the state had erred when the men were locked up.
In June 2015, Ayanda Tesana, Xabisa Menzi, Brandon Syster and Luvuyo Kula were being investigated for theft and robbery with aggravating circumstances.
According to court documents, the men were never formally arrested, but were warned to appear in court the day their case was to be heard.
On the court date, however, the case was postponed and they were all remanded in custody.
The quartet remained in jail until July 3 2015 when they were to apply for bail.
It was only then that the prosecutor in the case realised the men had been brought to court by means of warning – and were never arrested.
They were subsequently released and the case against them was also eventually dropped.
In his judgment, Plasket said Christelle Wiese, who was the control prosecutor at the time the men first appeared in court, could not recall whether she informed the magistrate the men were on warning.
Later in her evidence, she was more definite that she had not told him, Plasket said.
“There also was no formal application made to cancel the warnings,” the judge said.
“The plaintiffs alleged that the prosecutors who dealt with their matter owed them a duty of care which encompassed, inter alia, ensuring that they ‘were not detained in custody unnecessarily, they having been on warning prior to their first appearance’,” Plasket said,
“They alleged that Ms Wiese breached the duty owed to the plaintiffs by failing to inform the magistrate that the plaintiffs ‘were already out on warning to the knowledge of the investigating officer and that no bail conditions had been imposed by the investigating officer or any other state official’.
“I therefore conclude that the plaintiffs have established that their detention from June 26 2015 to July 3 2015 was unlawful,” Plasket said.