Teacher freed after rape trial errors

A teacher from Itsoseng in North West who served nearly five years of a life sentence for raping an 11-year-old schoolgirl, has been released after three appeal court judges found he should never have been convicted. Beeld reports that three appeal judges found that the erroneous conviction of NP Nonyane in the regional court should never have been ratified in the Bophuthatswana High Court when Nonyana was referred there for sentencing. According to the appeal judges the regional magistrate who presided over the trial made various legal errors, among others that he ignored the testimony of a witness for Nonyana, and that he found confirmation of the plaintiff's testimony where none existed.