Procedural clashes halt Yengeni trial

ANC veteran Tony Yengeni pleaded not guilty to drunk driving and reckless driving charges in the Cape Town Magistrate's court. File photo: Cindy Waxa

ANC veteran Tony Yengeni pleaded not guilty to drunk driving and reckless driving charges in the Cape Town Magistrate's court. File photo: Cindy Waxa

Published Feb 13, 2016

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Cape Town – The drunk driving trial of former African National Congress chief whip Tony Yengeni ground to a halt on Friday when the defence advocate and the prosecutor clashed over procedure.

Yengeni has pleaded not guilty in the Cape Town Magistrate’s Court before Magistrate Grant Engel.

Yengeni was arrested nearly three years ago, in Buitengracht Street in the Cape Town CBD, after a breathalyser test indicated his blood-alcohol level was 0.25 percent (the limit is 0.05).

At Friday’s proceedings, prosecutor Leon Snyman handed to the court a document certifying Yengeni’s blood count.

He said the certificate on its own, without the testimony of the analyst involved, was, on the face of it, sufficient proof of Yengeni’s transgression.

Defence counsel Dirk Uijs disputed this, and said the certificate could only be accepted as proof with the accompanying testimony of the analyst.

Snyman contended that the analyst’s testimony was not essential, while Uijs insisted it was.

At the previous hearing, Uijs suggested that the police official who had arrested Yengeni, and noted the event in his police pocket book, had “manufactured” the information after the event to support his testimony in court.

At Friday’s proceedings, the State led the testimony of another police official Melvyn Loggenstein, as proof that the incident was noted immediately after the arrest.

The pocket book in question was duly “signed off”, with the incident already noted in it, and handed to him for safe keeping immediately afterwards, which would have prevented the arresting officer from noting the incident falsely, he said.

The case was postponed to March 18 for argument about procedure, after which the magistrate is expected to rule whether the certificate pertaining to Yengeni’s blood-alcohol level may or may not be handed up as proof without the testimony of the analyst.

African News Agency

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