Phalaborwa – A legal team has been ordered to “move mountains” to get a forensic pathologist to court by Thursday to testify in the trial of the three men accused of feeding a fellow farm-worker to lions in Hoedspruit in January last year.

The Phalaborwa circuit court would not be placed at the disposal of the pathologist; he was a witness and should be at court to testify, pointed out judge George Maluleke, who was hearing the case with assessors Kate Choshi and Elphus Seemela.

Should defence counsel for one of the accused, Mark Scott-Crossley, request a postponement on the basis of the absence of the pathologist they would find “great reluctance” on the part of the court to grant the application, Maluleke warned.

Scott-Crossley’s legal representative Johann Engelbrecht SC informed the court he would probably have finished with the available witnesses by Thursday morning.

He said his instructing attorneys had been unable to reach the pathologist on Tuesday night, but had left a telephonic message at his office in Kempton Park on Wednesday morning.

Scott-Crossley is on trial with Richard Mathebula and Simon Mathebula for the murder of Nelson Chisale on January 31 last year. Chisale was viciously assaulted before being thrown over a fence into Mokwalo White Lion Project.

Engelbrecht made a further application for the State to make available the policeman and interpreter who took down Simon Mathebula’s statement about the incident.

He intended calling them in light of Mathebula’s denial that the statement was read back to him, and his denial that he made certain allegations contained in the statement.

He told the court that State prosecutor Ivy Thenga had yet to indicate whether she would make them available.

Maluleke expressed the “sincere hope” that counsel would help “move this matter forward” without unnecessary delays and postponements.

Source: News24.Com
URL: http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/New…/p>