Port Elizabeth – Murder accused Christopher Panayiotou’s legal team has accused a Port Elizabeth magistrate of incorrectly elevating the strength of the State’s case when she denied him bail in the sensational murder case in which he is accused of orchestrating the killing of his school teacher wife.
District court magistrate Abigail Beaton’s decision for denying Panayiotou bail on June 5 has come under scrutiny in documents filed with the court as Panayiotou’s legal team lodged their notice to appeal her ruling.
The 28-year-old Panayiotou is accused of masterminding the murder of his school teacher wife, Jayde, 29, in April. Jayde was assaulted, thrown in the boot of a car and shot twice in the back and once in the head. Her body was found on the outskirts of KwaNobuhle township in Uitenhage a day after she disappeared.
There was an outpouring of public grief in the wake of her murder but this soon turned to shock when it emerged that her husband had been arrested alongside two other men accused of carrying out her abduction and subsequent killing.
Panayiotou is charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, robbery with aggravating circumstances, kidnapping and defeating the ends of justice.
On 19 June he appeared alongside his co-accused, Siyoli and Sizwe Prince Vumazonke, the alleged triggerman, for the first time. The case was postponed to 13 August for further investigation.
Meanwhile, in papers filed in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court, Panayiotou’s attorneys stated that he intended to appeal to the High Court in Grahamstown in the Eastern Cape, against Beaton’s judgment in the bail hearing.
In the court documents, Panayiotou states that Beaton erred in finding that he did not show the existence of substantial and compelling circumstances to be released on bail.
According to Panayiotou’s documents, Beaton made “a number of serious factual errors” and elevated comments from the bar by the prosecutor (Senior State Advocate Marius Stander) to evidence, despite the defence objecting to the comments and submitting to Beaton that this was not evidence.
The appeal documents further state that Beaton dismissed or did not take into account numerous material contentions made by Panayiotou, contentions which were never contradicted by the State.
It is the defence’s argument that Panayiotou’s “factual allegations” were met with feeble, unimpressive, unconvincing and half-hearted attempts by the State to contradict his comments.
“The magistrate incorrectly elevated the strength or otherwise of the State’s case to be the be all and end all of the hearing and appeared, incorrectly as far as precedent is concerned, to believe that there was an onus on an applicant in Schedule 6 bail applications to show that the case was exceptionally weak and that he would in all probability be acquitted when no such onus rested – in effect - the magistrate confused the comments of a number of High Court judges.”
According to the documents, Beaton’s findings were self-contradictory in many ways, in particular:
* On the one hand she accepted unconvincing opinion evidence by the investigating officer as to the alleged dire financial state of the appellant whilst ignoring uncontested and unchallenged expert evidence to the contrary by the appellant.
* (She) at times, found that the appellant was in dire financial difficulty when the evidence did not support such a contention at all and then repeatedly contradicted the comment by suggesting inter alia that the appellant had more than enough funds to get money together to flee the country and that he could easily afford to lose R50 000 bail money.
The defence further contends that Beaton incorrectly criticised Advocate Terry Price in regard to his suggestion of R50 000 bail, suggesting that it was far too low in circumstances where:
* It was nothing more than a suggestion by the defence.
* Counsel for the defence repeatedly said to the magistrate that the amount of bail was in her hands and if she wanted to raise the amount there would not be a problem.
Beaton was further criticised for finding as a matter of “fact” that Panayiotou held dual citizenship. She was accused of too easily defending the investigating officer’s testimony that Panayiotou had applied for a passport after the disappearance of Jayde and before his bail was determined and that he was in possession of a Cyprian passport, when all the evidence pointed to the contrary.
“It was a fact that the appellant did not apply for the passport in 2015 and in fact applied for it on 5 March, 2013,” Panayiotou’s appeal papers state.
The defence states that Panayiotou only learnt that his passport was available when the investigating officer referred to it in court.
“The magistrate erred considerably in indicating that the appellant was at fault by not placing before court evidence that he held dual citizenship between South Africa and Cyprus and that he was a Cyprian citizen, especially where the uncontested evidence before her was that he in fact did inform his legal representatives of these facts.”
Regarding Panyiotou’s co-accused, Luthando Siyoli, turning State witness against him, the defence said Beaton downplayed their strong submission that the State’s case was a “one-trick pony” which by and large depended on the evidence of a Section 204 (State) witness to whom cautionary rules would apply during trial.
Panayiotou’s defence team also made mention of the fact that the alleged “entrapment” by the police would be subjected to a trial within a trial by the trial court and could very well not be allowed as part of the State’s case.
“The magistrate did not even attempt to consider this possibility,” Panayiotou argued.
When approached for comment, Stander said that court papers had not yet been served on him and at this stage it was not clear when or where the appeal would be heard.
ANA