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Judge acquits lawyer on drink-and-drive charges

Judge acquits lawyer on drink-and-drive charges

VETERAN criminal defence lawyer Hennie Barnard on Friday managed to do for himself what he has done for hundreds of clients over his 33-year-long career: he won himself an acquittal in a criminal case in which he had been in the unfamiliar role of the person standing accused before a court.

In a verdict delivered in the High Court in Windhoek on Friday, Judge Mavis Gibson pronounced the 62-year-old Barnard not guilty on a charge of driving under the influence of intoxicating liquor, alternatively driving with an excessive blood alcohol level, as well as a charge of reckless or negligent driving, alternatively inconsiderate driving. Barnard was found guilty on only one relatively more minor charge – of operating an unlicensed vehicle on a public road.When a traffic officer ordered Barnard to pull off the road in Windhoek on August 27 1999, it was found that the licence disc on his vehicle had expired.Because Barnard had already paid a fine on that charge, Judge Gibson let him go with a caution not to repeat that offence.Friday’s verdict lays to rest a case that had been pending against Barnard for close to six years, and brings to an end a drawn-out trial that first started before Judge Gibson two and a half years ago.Barnard pleaded not guilty on all charges, and went on to claim that he suspected that the blood sample drawn from him to determine the alcohol concentration in his blood might have been tampered with before it was analysed.The prosecution claimed that his blood alcohol level was measured to be 0,2 grams per 100 millilitres of blood – well above the legal limit of 0,08 g per 100 ml.From Judge Gibson’s verdict, it appears that Barnard, who conducted his own defence for the major part of the trial, managed to turn the tables on the traffic officers who initiated the case against him.As Judge Gibson took apart the case against Barnard to point out a list of ultimately fatal shortcomings and errors in the prosecution’s case, it at times it appeared from the court’s judgement that not Barnard, but the traffic and Police officers involved in the investigation, had ended up in the dock and under suspicion before the High Court.A central theme of Judge Gibson’s finding on the main charge – the count of driving under the influence of liquor, or with an excessive blood alcohol level – was that the prosecution had not managed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the blood sample that was found to contain an illegally high concentration of alcohol was indeed the sample taken from Barnard.The Judge found that several contradictions and irregularities marred the documentation that was supposed to prove an unbroken chain in the safeguarding, custody and integrity of the blood sample.One of these shortcomings emerged from the testimony of the traffic officer who stopped Barnard as he was driving along Independence Avenue on the afternoon of August 27 1999.The officer, Windhoek City Traffic Department Superintendent Sipapela Cletius Sipapela, demonstrated in court how he had closed and sealed the blood sample after it had been taken from Barnard and before it was left in Police custody and then sent to a laboratory to be analysed.The oaths on some statements made by officers who had at one stage been in control of the sample were commissioned in the absence of the person who had supposedly made the statement, some statements were signed by persons who were not the deponents of those statements, and some alterations on documents were not accompanied by the needed initials of the people who had made the statements in the first place, the Judge further recounted.All of this created an air of casualness that should not be present in this sort of criminal procedure, she remarked.Barnard was found guilty on only one relatively more minor charge – of operating an unlicensed vehicle on a public road.When a traffic officer ordered Barnard to pull off the road in Windhoek on August 27 1999, it was found that the licence disc on his vehicle had expired.Because Barnard had already paid a fine on that charge, Judge Gibson let him go with a caution not to repeat that offence.Friday’s verdict lays to rest a case that had been pending against Barnard for close to six years, and brings to an end a drawn-out trial that first started before Judge Gibson two and a half years ago.Barnard pleaded not guilty on all charges, and went on to claim that he suspected that the blood sample drawn from him to determine the alcohol concentration in his blood might have been tampered with before it was analysed.The prosecution claimed that his blood alcohol level was measured to be 0,2 grams per 100 millilitres of blood – well above the legal limit of 0,08 g per 100 ml.From Judge Gibson’s verdict, it appears that Barnard, who conducted his own defence for the major part of the trial, managed to turn the tables on the traffic officers who initiated the case against him.As Judge Gibson took apart the case against Barnard to point out a list of ultimately fatal shortcomings and errors in the prosecution’s case, it at times it appeared from the court’s judgement that not Barnard, but the traffic and Police officers involved in the investigation, had ended up in the dock and under suspicion before the High Court.A central theme of Judge Gibson’s finding on the main charge – the count of driving under the influence of liquor, or with an excessive blood alcohol level – was that the prosecution had not managed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the blood sample that was found to contain an illegally high concentration of alcohol was indeed the sample taken from Barnard.The Judge found that several contradictions and irregularities marred the documentation that was supposed to prove an unbroken chain in the safeguarding, custody and integrity of the blood sample.One of these shortcomings emerged from the testimony of the traffic officer who stopped Barnard as he was driving along Independence Avenue on the afternoon of August 27 1999.The officer, Windhoek City Traffic Department Superintendent Sipapela Cletius Sipapela, demonstrated in court how he had closed and sealed the blood sample after it had been taken from Barnard and before it was left in Police custody and then sent to a laboratory to be analysed.The oaths on some statements made by officers who had at one stage been in control of the sample were commissioned in the absence of the person who had supposedly made the statement, some statements were signed by persons who were not the deponents of those statements, and some alterations on documents were not accompanied by the needed initials of the people who had made the statements in the first place, the Judge further recounted.All of this created an air of casualness that should not be present in this sort of criminal procedure, she remarked.

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