A KZN woman, serving a 20 year sentence, uncovered a ballistics report proving that she did not murder her husband.
|||Durban - A former deputy school principal who was convicted of murdering her husband, has turned detective behind bars to try to prove her innocence.
And on Tuesday, crucial evidence that Philisiwe Gumede turned up from her cell at Westville Prison, and which allegedly proved she did not shoot her husband, Thamisanqa, was expected to be presented before Eshowe Regional Court, where she was applying to be immediately released on bail.
Gumede, former deputy principal of an Eshowe secondary school, was sent to prison for 20 years and has been at Westville for five years, including the year of the trial.
Another court hearing will follow Tuesday’s hearing in Eshowe, where the mother-of-two, who is in her mid-forties, will ask for her conviction to be set aside.
Derrick Mdluli, the director of the prisoner advocacy group, Justice for Prisoners and Detainees Trust, which has been fighting for Gumede, said on Monday that he had put in a requisition for Gumede to be transported to the Eshowe court from prison, for her bail application.
“There is enough evidence to prove that she is not supposed to be in prison,” he said.
And that evidence, which the prisoner was able to track down from Westville, is the all-important ballistics report which, although it had been collected from Pretoria where it had been prepared, was never produced during Gumede’s trial.
The report, which could have blown away the murder accusation, states that Gumede’s husband had shot himself.
“She (Gumede) is very clever, she did her own investigation and managed to get the ballistics report in prison,” Mdluli said.
The lawyer who will be representing Gumede in court on Tuesday, Professor Linda Mbletshe, said on Monday he did not know why the ballistics report was never produced during the murder trial.
“But it was a serious miscarriage of justice,” he said.
Daily News