Cape Town - On Friday, the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the Western Cape, Advocate Nicolette Bell briefed the media on her department’s strategy in dealing with priority crimes in the province.
Bell, who was previously acting in the position, was appointed by President Cyril Ramaphosa five months ago.
Upon her appointment, the DPP’s office had a 44% vacancy rate.
“I invested a considerable amount of time in resourcing this level of my leadership team.
“Five vacancies have recently been filled, with two appointments pending. When the latter are appointed, the vacancy rate of the Deputy DPP level will be reduced to 5%.
“I hope to have a full complement by the end of the year,” Bell said.
She said the DPP’s office has identified several crime types that will receive particular attention, namely: murder and femicide, gender-based violence, including sexual offences, organised crime, trio crimes, public transport violence, illegal possession of firearms, and aggravated robberies.
The priority initiatives to be tacked include corruption, organised crime, gender-based violence, including sexual offences, the Section 18 initiative, and murder.
Bell said they are aware of the impact of corruption and have adopted a zero-tolerance approach to corruption and cases involving losses to government, especially the municipalities through fraud and corruption.
“The division in the past five years has successfully prosecuted and ensured the conviction of 271 public officials of offences involving corruption or fraud.
“Many of these cases involved relatively small amounts of money but they are examples of our zero-tolerance approach. Our most notable prosecution resulted in the conviction of a provincial commissioner of police, Arno Lamoer and several high-ranking brigadiers.
“We recognised that most of our cases involving losses to the municipalities emanated from the Southern Cape and the methodology we had in place to deal with these matters did not necessarily result in investigations being expeditiously finalised and prosecuted. Consequently, we have motivated the creation of additional posts for the Southern Cape and to establish a satellite DPP office in George.
“We are also engaging with the judiciary to create an additional court in Bellville and in George to deal with complex commercial cases and corruption to prioritise the hearing of matters,” Bell said.
She said the DPP will be utilising the provisions of Section 18 of the Prevention of Organised Crime Act, where prosecutors seek to deprive accused persons of any benefit they derived from committing crime by obtaining a confiscation order, following the conviction of the accused.
Bell said since 2011, prosecutors moved 1 326 applications to confiscate proceeds to the value of R116 084 611. The proceeds were either paid to the victims of crime or into the Criminal Assets Recovery Fund.
“Gender-based violence, including femicide and domestic violence are central focus points. In addition, the focus is on the following vulnerable groups: children (child pornography, children in conflict with the law and infanticide), senior citizens, mental health, LGBTQIA+ hate crimes and persons at risk: human trafficking,” said.
Bell also outline current initiatives:
· Dedicated sexual offences prosecutors who service the dedicated courts.
· Reviewing capability to address sexual offences.
· Sexual offences DNA project. This is now a national project to prioritise DNA analysis for sexual offences. This had a positive impact on the finalisation and conviction rate. The success of this drive has resulted in a similar drive for murder cases.
· All cases where children died under suspicious circumstances escalated to the DPP office for screening - child death reviews.
· DPP monitoring all mental observation referrals of accused persons in the province.
Bell said murder cases in the province are key priorities, but stated the Covid-19 pandemic had resulted in a backlog of cases.
She said to address this backlog, the Judge President, John Hlophe has created four additional divisions to complement the existing 12 divisions to work through the backlog.
“To increase the high court footprint, the Judge President also designated additional circuit courts, including a High Court at Pollsmoor Correctional Centre. This affords us an additional opportunity to finalise prosecutions more speedily.
“We have finalised 35 cases on the high court roll, largely due to the extra division the Judge President created. These four extra divisions are run on a fast-track basis, with shorter trials allocated to these rolls. At the start of the term, we had 27 part-heard matters on the court roll,” Bell said.
The DPP office has screened 397 murder cases and actively guiding 103 of the investigations. A total of 44 of the cases have been identified as possible high court trials.
“Femicide matters are of particular importance, and we continue to monitor them throughout their journey through the criminal justice system.
“A system has been implemented whereby prosecutors engage the family of the deceased shortly after the matter is enrolled. The aim of this engagement is to advise them of the various contact persons in the process and explain the criminal trial process,” Bell said.
In collaboration with the SAPS, the murder bilateral project is designed to investigate murders in categories where: No arrests or suspects have been identified, where matters have been struck from the court roll, with the aim of re-enrolling those cases, and where witnesses have gone missing or are reluctant to testify.
She said with this project the DPP seeks to achieve outcomes such as: referring matters to the SAPS’ Cold Case Squad to enhance investigations, exhaust all forensic tools to solve the crime, monitor further outstanding investigations with a view of re-enrolling the matter on the court roll, identify possible serial murder patterns.
“This initiative serves to focus on matters where there have been multiple deceased and femicides. The SAPS leadership have endorsed it, since we want to avoid dockets taking years before they receive the attention of a prosecutor,” Bell said.