04 Jun 2023

The Court of Appeal has on Friday dismissed Jonas Masebo’s appeal of a conviction and 17-year imprisonment by the High Court.

The appeal was dismissed on the grounds that it had no merit.

Masebo was convicted  in March 2020 and sentenced to an imprisonment term of 17 years for the murder of Tiny Mosweu, who was a mother to his child.

Delivering the ruling, Justice Isaac Lesetedi of the Court of Appeal said the appellant sought leave to appeal sentence a year later, contrary to the rules of the court that a notice of appeal had to reach the registrar within six weeks of the delivery of judgement.

Justice Lesetedi said the appellant explained that he had instructed his attorney, Mr Baboki Dambe to note an appeal on his behalf of which he did not.

His second reason was that upon discovery of the failure, the appellant filed a notice of appeal, which due to his ignorance of proper procedure, turned to be defective.

Justice Lesetedi explained that the first reason given for the delay of failure by the attorney to file an appeal, merely accounted for the first three months of the period of delay and the remaining nine months were not accounted for.

“The explanation for the delay to be reasonable must account for the whole period of the delay not only parts thereof and the longer the delay, the more onerous the duty to explain it,” Justice Lesetedi said.

He further said the appeal against sentence was misconceived and the sentence imposed upon the applicant was significantly below the trend of sentences which had been imposed by the Court in the last 10 years. ends