Cape Town - The Supreme Court of Appeal has reserved judgment on convicted wife killer Jason Rohde’s appeal against the ruling by Western Cape High Court judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe that found him guilty of the murder of his wife Susan in July 2016.
Judge Salie-Hlophe sentenced him to an effective 20 years’ imprisonment, 18 years on the murder conviction and five years on the conviction of defeating the ends of justice. Of the five years, three were ordered to run concurrently with the first sentence.
In his appeal, which was heard by five judges, Rohde claimed that the State’s investigation of the forensic evidence was not objective or thorough.
During the trial, evidence was given that Rohde and his wife had quarrelled over his affair with another woman.
The court was told that the dispute and the relationship reached breaking point during the night of July 23/24, 2016 and the early morning of July 24 in room 221 at the Spier Hotel in Stellenbosch, when Rohde told Susan that their marriage was over.
That morning, at about 8.25am, Susan was found in the bathroom with the door locked from the inside and the cord of a hair-curling tool around her neck attached to the towel hook on the bathroom door. All efforts to revive her failed.
The State claimed that Rohde murdered his wife and staged the scene to make it look as if she had hanged herself.
Rohde pleaded not guilty to both charges and testified that she took her own life.
Rohde’s advocate, Francois van Zyl SC, argued that the trial court failed to take into consideration the probabilities that supported his client’s evidence.
Van Zyl said the evidence given by State pathologist Dr Akbal Khan, including his testimony that Susan had died at 5.40am on July 24, was unreliable.
During cross-examination at the trial, Khan had conceded that his methodology to determine a time of death was seriously flawed and accordingly the time of 5.40am that he calculated could not be relied on as the time of death.
In court papers, Van Zyl said: “Khan’s mind was made up, and he looked for that which confirmed his conclusions and ignored other possibilities. Khan, for example, did not carry out procedures or investigations that would have been employed by a pathologist who was objectively predisposed.”
The trial court found that he could not answer questions crucial to the events of that morning and contradicted himself in a number of ways, but Van Zyl argued that Rohde answered the questions put to him as best he could.
“Bearing in mind the circumstances under which he was acting, it is also respectfully denied that he contradicted himself in a number of ways.
“The trial court’s reasoning that the appellant explained his inability to remember details, such as the cord around the deceased’s neck, as a result of shock and trauma and to compare that with his evidence surrounding his arrest of which he could remember detail, is with respect, to compare apples with pears,” said Van Zyl.