A man who hacked a 7-month-old baby to death with a garden hoe, claiming that the baby was “Satan,” felt that his life imprisonment sentence was too harsh and he asked the court on appeal to change his sentence to one of 20 years imprisonment, as that was more fair.

Lewis Dlamini, who had never had a brush with the law before he hacked the baby to death, turned to the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, to appeal his sentence.

Although the court which earlier convicted him found that the murder of the baby was not premeditated, which ordinarily would call for a sentence of around 15 years imprisonment, the judge who meted out life to him felt that this case was so horrific that it warranted the maximum sentence.

Judge Jan Swanepoel, who wrote the appeal judgment, which was concurred by two other judges, remarked that this murder was a particularly strange, inexplicable and cruel one.

The appellant, now 54-years-old, is an unmarried man with no previous convictions, and with two adult children. At the time of the murder, the appellant was gainfully employed.

On the day of the murder, Dlamini was drinking at a shebeen, together with his girlfriend. Also at the shebeen was the deceased, then a 7-month-old girl, and the deceased’s grandmother.

Dlamini said that he drank a substantial amount of alcohol, and that he was under the influence, but the evidence established otherwise.

At some point, the child became upset and started crying. The grandmother tried to settle the child down, but later on, she decided to take her home.

As she was preparing juice for the child at her home, the appellant walked into the house. The grandmother intended to go to a meeting, and she was going to take the baby with her, but Dlamini insisted that she leave the baby with him.

On the way to the meeting, the granny decided to rather not go to the meeting. After reaching the third house from her own, she turned back. When she arrived back at home, she came across a horrific scene.

The child was lying on the floor, covered in blood. The appellant was in possession of a garden hoe with which he had hacked the child to death. When the granny asked the appellant why he had killed the child, he said it was not a child but Satan.

The child had died from blunt force trauma to the head. She had multiple injuries, not only to her head, but also to her torso and arms. Two ribs were fractured. She had contusions of the lung and liver. The child had clearly died a most painful death, Judge Swanepoel said.

In court, the appellant insisted that he had been intoxicated on the day in question, and that he could not remember anything about the attack on the child.

He never accepted responsibility for the attack, nor did he provide any explanation for his conduct. Judge Swanepoel said there is nothing to suggest that the appellant has any remorse for his actions.

His counsel went as far as to place on record that he had urged the appellant to tell the court what had transpired, but that the appellant refused to speak.

“When one considers the aggravating circumstances in this case, it is difficult not to find that life imprisonment is wholly appropriate,” the judge said. He commented that the circumstances of this case are heinous.

“Here the victim, a defenceless baby, was utterly helpless and unable to fight back against the appellant… in this case, there could not have been anything motivating the vicious killing of the child.”

In turning down the appeal, the judge said the appellant is a mature man who should have been able to control his impulses. The judge said, in his view, the vicious murder of a defenceless baby deserved that the killer received a life imprisonment sentence.

Pretoria News

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