Pretoria - A man from Ermelo who attended a trial as a member of the public but had to spend a few hours in the holding cells as he apparently would not stop talking in court and banged a court door, is claiming R50 000 in damages from the magistrate who ordered his short incarceration.
Peace Joseph Mbokane said in papers before the Pretoria High Court he was attending the Ermelo Regional Court on November 9, 2009, when magistrate Samuel Hallatt “maliciously” ordered the court orderly to arrest him. He was evidently thrown into a holding cell.
Mbokane said he was deprived of his liberty until about 1pm when he was told he was free to go. According to him, he was not guilty of any wrongdoing and that the magistrate simply acted out of malice when he ordered that he be locked up for a few hours.
But magistrate Hallatt, the first witness to take the stand, said he had repeatedly warned Mbokane and others to keep quiet in court, but they would not listen. Mbokane, especially, ignored his request for order and the last straw was when Mbokane slammed the door leading out of the courtroom.
Hallatt, who had been regional court magistrate for 14 years, said the Ermelo court was exceptionally busy and sat long hours every day. The court had been lauded for four years as the one with the highest production in the country.
He often had to tell people on a daily basis to keep quiet as it was a noisy court with bad acoustics and there was a lot of work to be done.
Members of the public usually respected this and once requested, they kept quiet.
On this particular day, he had six cases and one of them involved the sentencing of a minor for rape.
Hallatt said he ordered the public to leave the courtroom, as it was going into camera. The interpreter also told the public to leave, which they did.
According to the magistrate, the people kept on talking as they headed for the door and he again had to silence them. He recognised one man who was talking from seeing him from time to time in court.
“Every town has a professional court attendee,” he said, referring to Mbokane.
After the latter slammed the door as he left the courtroom, “like a naughty child”, the magistrate told the court orderly to “fetch that man”. When the orderly came back with Mbokane, the magistrate ordered him taken to the holding cell.
Hallatt said he could not recall whether he had told the orderly when to release Mbokane or whether he had done so himself, but the orderly had worked with him for many years and knew he only had to detain the man until the court was out of session, shortly before one in the afternoon.
Hallatt said he was surprised when he later received notice that he was being sued for R50 000.
Pretoria News