05 Apr 2022

The Jwaneng Magistrate Court has discharged Benjamin Magosi from a threat to kill case.

 Magistrate Mpho Setshegetso however informed the prosecution of its liberty to reinstate the case.

The ruling came after the defence attorney, Mr Thapelo Mphala successfully argued that the charge sheet furnished by the prosecution was defective as it had no stamp and was not signed.

He argued that the absence of such crucial elements made the charge sheet defective.

He also argued that its authenticity could not be guaranteed.

“We are talking about the liberties of an individual here and we cannot use a document that we cannot prove came procedurally before court.

We cannot even rule out the possibility that the case itself could have been cooked up,” he said.

However, magistrate Setshegetso reprimanded him for bringing up allegations.

The defence’s case was made easier by the prosecution’s admission that the absence of the crucial elements made the charge sheet inadmissible before the courts.

The prosecution had tried to argue that the absence of the two elements was just a procedural error made by the clerk of court, and that the error could be corrected by amending it.

The prosecution has also argued that the fact that the matter was assigned a case number showed that the charge sheet went properly through the filing process.

Magosi is allged to have said “ke tsile gogo bolaya ka tlhobolo. Ke go beetse lerumo lele one ke tsile gogo thuba tlhogo ka lone.”

The translated English version however, quoted him as saying “I have a bullet that I am going to blow your head with”.

The prosecution elected to abandon the English version in preference for the Setswana one as they said the gist of the case was not in the translation, but the threats.

Magosi was accused of having threatened to kill detective constable Otshidile Popo who is the investigating officer in a murder case involving Magosi. ENDS