Witnesses in South Africa, the stepchildren of the criminal justice system (original) (raw)
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This book seeks to address the frictions between protecting the rights of accused persons and protecting the physical and psychological wellbeing of witnesses in Africa. Developed states are still attempting to refine the weighing of these two public goods. The African challenge is complicated by poor capacity and integrity in the justice sector, as well as by lower living standards. These issues commonly cause justice inefficiencies which impede both witness protection and the rights of the accused. While the latter are critical to the integrity of the criminal justice process, witness protection is often the essential component of the successful prosecution of organised crime. Witness protection`s importance is tied to African states` growing willingness to address the phenomena of organised crime. The book addresses witness protection in South Africa as well as initiatives to create protection programmes in Kenya, Uganda and Sierra Leone. It also examines witness protection at the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) and the Special Court for Sierra Leone (SCSL). Its interpretation of witness protection is wide and includes sensitive investigatory, prosecutorial and judicial practices as well as relocation and identity change.
Witness Anonymity and the South African Criminal Justice Systems
South African Journal of Criminal Justice, 2011
This article will focus on witness anonymity as a tool to encourage the reporting of criminal activities and criminal victimisation by victims and other witnesses, and as a mechanism to ensure that witnesses in criminal proceedings are duly protected. This will be juxtaposed against an accused’s right to a fair trial, in terms of s 35(3) of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996 and relevant provisions of the Criminal Procedure Act,1 as well as the foundational principle of the criminal justice system that an accused has a right to confront witnesses testifying against him or her and that such testimony should be given in an open court and in the presence of the accused. Arguments in favour of witness anonymity, primarily based on the contention that the right of confrontation is not absolute, will be considered together with examples from other jurisdictions and arguments asserting that the curtailing of the right of confrontation to accommodate true witness anonymity are too extreme and inconceivable in terms of an accused’s right to a fair trial.
WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAMMES – SOME LESSONS FROM THE SOUTH AFRICAN EXPERIENCE
The various Witness Protection Programmes in South Africa (for more detail on the background to South African Witness Protection Programmes see Spek 1998) have essentially not inspired enough confidence in witnesses to make use of them. Relatively speaking, witness protection is still in its infancy in South Africa though considerable progress has been made since the first attempts in the late 1980s and early 1990s to set up better and more effective programmes.
QUT Law & Justice Journal, 2003
Caution needs to be exercised when comparing the annual number of cases recorded with the annual number of cases undetected, withdrawn, sent to court, and prosecuted and convicted (also called the 'yearly-review' method). Cases recorded during one year, are often investigated and prosecuted during the following year. For example, the investigation of a complicated murder case reported in December 1999 might be finalised in mid-2000. The prosecution of the case may occur only in 2001. Rates based on the yearly-review method are premised on the assumption that the statistics are stable from year to year and that there is no growth or decline in backlogs. The advantage of the yearly-review method is that it is quick to collect data for an Vol 3 No 2 (QUTLJJ)
Law and Post-Apartheid South Africa
1988
This Article examines South African perspectives on the legal system within South Africa post-Apartheid, in particular the new focus on human rights.
University of South Africa, 2020
Modern society is increasingly threatened by organised crime. Crime undermines democracy and causes harm to the general functioning of a country and the quality of life of its citizens. A lack of protection measures for witnesses of crime renders the criminal justice system weak and ineffective in its quest to fight crime. Witness protection programmes and the testimony of a witness play a pivotal role in the fight against organised crime, without which securing successful prosecutions becomes a daunting task. Despite the important role of witnesses in the criminal justice system, there seems to be a dearth of literature focusing on the experiences of witnesses within the South African context. The researcher was able to gain an in-depth understanding of the experiences, challenges, and coping strategies of witnesses by employing an instrumental case study design within the framework of exploratory, descriptive, and contextual research from the vantage point of witnesses and staff members in the witness protection programme in South Africa. A total number of 30 participants were recruited by means of purposive sampling. Data was collected through individual, face-to-face interviews undertaken in six provinces. Analysis of the data was conducted in line with the eight steps of data analysis proposed by Tesch (in Creswell 2009:186) and Guba’s principles of trustworthiness were employed in the verification of the data. The ethical principles of informed consent, confidentiality, anonymity, beneficence, data management, and debriefing were observed. This study drew from Caplan’s (1964) crisis theory and the coping theory by Lazarus (1993). The findings of this study revealed that there is a general lack of awareness among the communities and members of the criminal justice system about the existence of the witness protection programme in South Africa. Witnesses also expressed that they found it difficult to cope and adjust in the programme, because of challenges such as social uprooting and isolation. While some witnesses were able to adjust, some resorted to exiting the programme prematurely. Suggestions by participants towards the support of witnesses paved a foundation for the development of guidelines for coordinated service delivery in the South African Witness Protection Programme. KEY TERMS Challenges; experiences; guidelines; social work; social worker; service delivery; perspectives; policy; protector; witness; witness protection programme.
During the last decade there has been an explosion of case law in the broad field of criminal law.1 The impact of the Constitution2 has been extensive. The fuli scope of constitutional rights has, however, been constrained by the influence of instrumental arguments in rights adjudication in the context of the competing public interests that underpin the application of criminal law. This raises the question as to how the courts should respond to demands of instrumentaLiry.