Appeal against city murder sentence succeeds

A man sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment after being found guilty of murder in the Windhoek Regional Court has successfully appealed against his sentence, which has now been changed to an effective jail term of 17 years.

Marcel Groenewald’s appeal against the sentence he received at the end of his trial in May last year was upheld in a judgement delivered in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

In the same judgement, the court also upheld the appeal of Groenewald’s co-accused during his trial, Paul Loots, against his conviction and effective prison term of four years. Loots was found guilty as an accessory after the fact in respect of murder.

In the appeal judgement, acting judge Makapa Simasiku and judge Claudia Claasen set aside the 20-year prison term to which Groenewald was sentenced, and replaced it with a sentence of 19 years’ imprisonment, of which two years are suspended for a period of five years on condition that Groenewald is not convicted of murder committed during the period of suspension.

Groenewald (25) and Loots (29) were accused of murdering a 45-year-old man, Samuel Koopman, by stabbing him in the stomach with a knife in Windhoek on 1 February 2020.

The two men were arrested two days after Koopman was found dead lying next to a street in the Suiderhof area of Windhoek. He had died of a large stab and cut wound to his abdomen.

Groenewald and Loots denied guilt during their trial.

During the trial, Groenewald testified that he confronted Koopman with a knife after discovering that his Playstation game console had been stolen from Loots’ car.

According to Groenewald, Koopman attacked him when he saw the knife Groenewald had with him.

Groenewald said he and Koopman both fell to the ground, and that Koopman must have sustained the fatal injury to his abdomen when they fell and had a struggle for the possession of the knife.

Loots told the court he was in his pickup during the altercation between Groenewald and Koopman, which he said he did not see.

In the judgement in which he found both men guilty, magistrate Victor Nyazo said the fatal wound to Koopman’s abdomen could not have been inflicted accidentally, considering its size, but was the result of an intentional act.

Nyazo also said he did not believe Loots’ version that he did not see what happened between Groenewald and Koopman.

Simasiku remarked in the appeal judgement that the magistrate was correct when he concluded that Groenewald intentionally stabbed Koopman.

Admissions by Groenewald that he knew wielding a knife during a confrontation could lead to fatal injuries, and that if Koopman grabbed him it would have been out of fear of being stabbed or assaulted, undermined his claim that Koopman was accidentally harmed, Simasiku reasoned.

Evidence that Groenewald punched Koopman twice after the fatal injury was inflicted also suggests an intent to harm, Simasiku said.

Noting that an accessory after the fact tries to enable a perpetrator to evade liability for a crime, Simasiku said it could not be found that Loots intended to assist Groenewald in evading justice when he drove away from the scene with Groenewald.

“When [Loots] stated he did not want to be part of trouble and left it to [Groenewald] to continue with the search for other suspects, it could be interpreted as a desire to distance himself from criminality, rather than a deliberate act to help [Groenewald] evade justice,” Simasiku said.

On Groenewald’s sentence, Simasiku said it was not inappropriate or shocking, but the magistrate failed to give sufficient weight to the time Groenewald had spent in custody before he was sentenced.

Defence lawyer Johan van Vuuren, assisted by Jan Wessels, represented Groenewald and Loots in the appeal.

The state was represented by Basson Lilungwe.

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