Durban - Nick Longano’s legal team says several alleged “gross irregularities and misdirections” of the trial court led to his being wrongly convicted of murder.
On Tuesday Longano’s advocate, Gideon Scheltema SC, argued in the appeal before Judges Mohini Moodley, Esther Steyn and Piet Bezuidenhout, that there were problems with the way the trial court had approached a so-called “neutral report” of psychologist Clive Willows.
Longano was convicted in September 2014 of the murder of his former girlfriend, Vinoba Naidoo, in their Glenwood flat in 2010.
He was sentenced to 15 years in prison but was granted bail pending his appeal.
The State had alleged that Longano murdered Naidoo by placing his foot on her neck.
Naidoo had broken off her eight-year relationship with Longano a month before her death because he had not wanted to get married.
He alleged that on the day of Naidoo’s death, they got in an argument at the flat and she attacked him with a candlestick holder which triggered a reaction in him which led to him acting without being aware of what he was doing.
The defence put forward the rare defence of sane automatism, where a person involuntarily commits an act in an altered state of mind.
Scheltema told the appeal judges that a report by Willows, who was a State witness, had been irregularly placed before the court before the witness was called to testify.
The State did not call Willows to testify and the defence then applied for trial Judge Kate Pillay to recuse herself because she had had sight of his report despite Willows not being called to testify.
Judge Pillay refused the recusal application and called Willows to testify.
Scheltema argued that there was a “reasonable apprehension of bias” because Willows’s report had been drawn to cause prejudice to the defence’s case.
State advocate Nadira Moosa argued that if even the appeal court found there had been irregularities, the defence had failed to prove that Longano had suffered any prejudice due to this.
Judgment was reserved.
The Mercury