Durban - The reliability of the GPS data retrieved from the device mounted on Olympian Burry Stander’s bicycle took centre stage on Wednesday during the culpable homicide trial of taxi driver Njabulo Nyawose.
Stander had been cycling north on Marine Drive near Shelly Beach in January last year when Nyawose crashed into the athlete, killing him. It is alleged that Nyawose turned illegally over a solid centre barrier line in front of Stander.
Nyawose’s attorney, Xolile Ntshulana, on Wednesday argued that evidence provided by Peter Jurgen Smith, a GPS tracking device technician, when he was cross-examined in court last month, could not be “rendered admissible” as the manner in which the data was obtained was unreliable.
This, he said, was because there was no trail of how the evidence was stored by police prior to it being retrieved by the device manufacturers.
State prosecutor Christelle Rossouw urged the court to admit the data.
She said, according to Smith’s testimony, “the device could not be manipulated without leaving a trace or a footprint in the form of a new date and time stamp which the computer would automatically assign to the manipulated data”.
Ntshulana argued that: “The evidence indicates it is highly unsafe to rely on this piece of evidential material… the court ought to attach very little or no weight at all in the evidence of video.”
The claims were dismissed by magistrate Charmaine Barnard who ruled that the retrieved GPS data could be used.
In her ruling, she said she had considered Smith’s “undisputed evidence” that it was “impossible to alter any data on the device itself”.
“The data is computer generated on the device without any interference,” she said.
She said it was only possible to edit the data once downloaded on to a computer. Barnard said it was therefore “immaterial” how many hands handled the device before the data was generated.
The trial continues on Thursday.
The Mercury