Cape Town – Jason Rohde has been granted leave to appeal both his conviction and sentence by the Supreme Court of Appeal.
In April, the wife killer’s bid to appeal his conviction for murder was dismissed by the Western Cape High Court. He then petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Rohde is expected to apply for bail after being granted leave to appeal.
"I am of the view that the applicant has not satisfied this court that he has a reasonable chance of success," Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe said in April.
Judge Salie-Hlophe said the defence had merely rehashed arguments made during Rohde's trial and sentencing proceedings.
In arguments for leave to appeal in the high court, the defence had questioned the manner in which the post-mortem was conducted. It also argued that the State pathologist's interpretation of the ligature mark around his wife Susan's neck was incorrect.
Rohde maintained during the trial that his affair had driven his wife to take her life.
Sentenced in February, the former property mogul was found guilty of strangling his wife and then staging the murder as a hanging suicide.
Susan was found with an electric cord wrapped around her neck, hanging from a hook behind the bathroom door of the room the couple had shared at the Spier Wine Estate hotel in Stellenbosch on July 24, 2016.
Rohde was sentenced to an effective 20 years' imprisonment, 18 years for the murder and five years for obstructing the ends of justice. Three of the years in the second count are to run concurrently with the murder sentence.