Convicted of murder - sentenced to five MINUTES in jail!

[71Commander]

perhaps she should have filed for divorce instead of murdering the guy.

And left his rotten butt for someone else to stumble across and wed.

Why was leaving not an option?

Maybe under threat of death. It's in the papers all the time from coast to coast. The boyfriend/husband states that "If you leave me, I will hunt you down and kill you". What she did was a pre-emptive strike.

 

[Werewolf]

Men who abuse women are among the lowest form of life on Planet Earth. They are evil control freaks pure and simple and are proof positive that "some people just need killin' ".

 

[P95Carry]

I am not too bothered by scumbags being smoked when and if deserved ... but a case like this ... I would in all honesty want to see and read every scrap of information, in detail, before siding with one party or the other.

What''seems to be'' is all too often not the whole deal. Given ALL the facts, as per a juror - and some - I could probably decide much more easily.

 

[Sneaky]

The judge was a lot closer to the issue than any of us. She knows what went down, and why.

Probably some obligation to the South African judicial sytem militated a goofy 5 minute sentence. It takes serious balls to hand down a ruling like that. My hat's off to Judge Satchwell.

And I'll bet her custody officers treated her like a queen for those 5 minutes.

 

[peacefuljeffrey]

or perhaps she should have filed for divorce instead of murdering the guy.

That is NOT justice.

Hear hear.

It may be difficult to do, but a woman in that situation is obligated to extricate herself from it. It is not impossible to walk away, go for help, start over, disappear, etc. rather than stay in a situation so bad that it drives you to murder.

I mean, if killing him is so justified, because the abuse was so very bad, how does she justify having stayed in it for so long?

She was obligated first and foremost to leave; a depraved, torturous murder like she subjected him to is far beyond acceptable or tolerable. Scumbag or not, she descended to his level. Imagine what his thumbs must have looked like as he struggled to breathe as he died. Probably ripped them out attempting to free himself. Making him do this is morally justified, because he is alleged to have beaten her over the years of their marriage?? I call B.S. on that one.

Her sentence does not reflect the severity of the wrong that she did.

If everyone who had been harmed in some way by another person went killed the transgressor rather than leave the person and have nothing further to do with him/her, well, we'd have our population control problems well in hand.


-Jeffrey

 

[Sneaky]

PeacefulJeffery, I have to respectfully disagree. Certain assumptions are being made here that may not necessarily reflect the situation.

A woman subjected to routine violent assault will not (generalizing here, sorry) directly confront the man responsible 'in the heat of the moment.' To quote Martina McBride, "I ain't sayin it's right or it's wrong, but maybe it's the only way."

That being the case (as the judge believes it was), a ruthless expedient would be required. She would have focused on self-preservation.

Personally, I think she hit him in his sleep. She would have been 80% finished by the time he awoke (assuming he was lucid to begin with. Most often, the victim is drugged or overimbibes when 'opportunity knocks' in these cases).

So, I'm going with the judge on this one. I respect your opinion about the sentencing, but there are exceptions to every rule, even the Rule of Law.

 

[orangeninja]

It doesn't matter. The Western Civilized world does not take crimes, even heinous crimes, commited by women as seriously as they do crimes by men. I'll back up my statements with the following case scenario's, you may recognize a couple.

1.) Mother suffering depression systematically drowns 5 young boys to death one by one over the course of an hour or more. She convicted and eligable for parole after 20 some odd years.

2.) Wife, suffering from abuse, shoots husband while he sat on the couch 5 times with a .38 special.

3.) Wife cut's abusive husbands pecker off. Gets sent to a psyc ward for 6 months to a year.

4.) Mother feels her son's are going to hell, bashes all their heads in with a rock while they sleep. 2 die, 1 will have severe retardation the rest of his life. I believe she will be eligable for parole in around 11 years.

5.) Abused wife, ties husband to bed, spends hours slicing him up with a kitchen knife, takes a break to put their daughter to bed, then continues the torture of him. Including deep gouges to the abdomen, slices to the penis and testicles, etc. Read: torture.

6.) Wife whose husband is cheating on her runs husband over while the daughter of the man was in the car with her. Kills him after repeated strikings. Gets 20 years. Parole in 10.

7.) Mother drives car off bridge to kill two sons so that she can be with her new boyfriend. Unkown sentence.

8.) Wife whose husband is cheating ties him to a bed, sticks a curling iron up his rectum, turns it on and leaves him tied up alone in the house. He was saved a couple of hours later when someone heard his screams. She was charged with aggravated assault.

9.) Teacher has sex with student who is a minor, convicted of it TWICE and ends up pregnant by said minor. Gets a couple years in prison, then gets to maintain contact with victim. It was debated as to if she should register as a sex offender.

10.) Teacher has sex with student who is a minor. Outcome of trial not yet known.

The list goes on and on but they all have one thing in common. The perps "feelings" and why the victims all had it coming (except the pedophiles). None were given max sentences or even median sentences.

Society had better start to take women seriously....that includes in the criminal justice realm. Ask yourself, had men commited the same crimes as above, what would have happened and how would your attitude towards the crime change?

 

[Sneaky]

Nice use of (horrific) case examples, Alduro!

Geez, I just cooked lunch !!!

I will certainly concede that Western influences and social ideas regarding sex affect the decisions of the courts. This is proven time and time again. Good points all around. Do they apply to this case? I don't know.

I think until somebody can provide a more detailed account of the case, we're all going to stick to our positions on this one.

 

[brian roberts]

control freak....

remember "In Broad Daylight" by Harry MacLean....

 

[Firethorn]

Hmm...

This was done in Africa, not the USA. While I can think of a number of options in our court systems, such as Temporary insanity, justifiable homocide(maybe not), etc... Different legal systems have different quirks. It's entirely possible that this was the best option open to the judge. They might not have recognize the TI defense. Heck, the divorce system might be entirely different.

Wait, did some research, aparently divorce only costs something like R150. Could still be because of death threats and such.



People in abusive relationships to tend to act wierd.

 

[richyoung]

I have nothing but sympathy for abused women - I am about to marry a survivor of near-fatal abuse, and have to deal with its aftermath every day of my life. Having said that - if she had him handcuffed - she had the option of leaving, and calling the local gendarmes to uncuff him as soon as she was safely away. This was pre-meditated, cold-blooded MURDER - the judge is nuts.

 

[flatrock]

Apparently the Judge felt that this guy was a really bad scumbag and deserved what he got.

In our country, her actions would not be considered justifiable, and she would have to pay a high price for taking the law into her own hands.

They aren't in our Country.

If this guy was as bad as it sounds like he was, I'm glad he will be unable to victimize anyone else.

It doesn't sound like theres any real concern that the woman will kill anyone else, or be anything but a reasonably law abiding citizen in the future.

Punishing her more would do nothing to rehabilitate here, the purpose of it would be to dissuade other people from taking the law into their own hands.

While the Judge's decision doesn't match what we do here in the US, I'm not sure justice hasn't been served in this case. I sure won't lose any sleep over it.

 

[Sean85746]

You know my Grand Daddy said:

"Some folks just need killin'"

 

[hso]

The question of exactly how she got an abusive control freak thumbcuffed leaps to mind. Was this some form of bondage suffocation sex play that allowed her to get the upper hand this way? Did she do this to him or find him in this state and then do nothing to get him out?

 

[R.H. Lee]

From "Chicago":

I mean imagine why was he hittin' this woman
Why was she takin' that
Now picture her fightin' back
Think of the ass kickin'
Think of his ass flippin' down the stairs
And me at the top smilin' he should have stopped wildin'
Now could you picture me tryin' to finish him off
See why I pictured me on this side of the law
High heels leave holes
You'd have thought I was gunnin'
Now the cops comin', I ain't runnin' (He had it comin')
Girl you should have had seen it
Shoulda bobbed and weaved it,
'Fore the cops came got a couple of a clean hits
In rode the hate suits
Couldn't take the a-buse
But I couldn't explain that to the state troops
But you know girl (oh yeah, you go girl)
Plus I look real cute in orange jumpsuits
This is a story I'm tellin' and I ain't changin' nothin'
I just needed you to know, your honor.



He had it comin'
He only had himself to blame
If you'd've been there
If you'd've seen it
I think that you would have done the same

 

[dustind]

I do not mean to offend anyone, but if you have to ask "why didn't she just leave him." You probably do not understand the psychological abuse. If it was that easy, there would be almost no cases of abuse that lasted more than a day.

 

[Derius_T]

Okay, so perhaps the guy was a scumbag. We have the womans testimony that he abused her for almost 10 years, yet I see no other witnesses or any evidence to that fact in the story. We are just to take the womans WORD for it? What if she had a grudge against the guy for an extra-marital affair or some such, and fabricated the abuse story to cover up her murder? Stranger things have happened. I would want some kind of proof as to his aleged behavior.

Now, if it were true that he did this, the woman is partly to blame, in the fact that she did not leave or prosecute him when he did it. No one deserves to be abused, but why would someone let it continue for so long with no legal action? If I were to hit MY wife, I have no doubt I would be hit back, and definately be in jail, as it should be. If she were to hit me, same deal. Common sense to me.

But the fact of the case rests in this statement:

Six months after their marriage everything turned sour. Nine years later Engelbrecht thumb-cuffed her husband's hands behind his back and sat in an adjacent room as the air in the plastic bag she had placed over his head slowly ran out.

Now, I would have no problem with her killing guy by any means necessary if it were in self defense, and if she were being beaten, threatened, or in immediate fear for her life.

But this story shows that she acted out of revenge for the alleged abuse, either overpowered, or convinced him through some means to allow himself to be handcuffed to a chair, then while he was helpless, cold bloodedly put a plastic bag over his head and left the room while he suffocated. Now alot of you, (mainly women I would bet) have said good, he deserved it. And yes, if she had defended herself and killed him, yes, he deserved it. But the FACT of the matter is that this was cold-blooded, pre-meditated, murder. In no way an act of self defense or preservation under the law.