Well you do seem hellbent on implying that OP will get bail. You've posted that Dadic article a number of times, seemed to ignore the law norm and circumstances of OP's case and in one case even changed the race of someone to help strengthen your point! I'm not going to play tit-for-tat and list innumerable cases where bail wasn't granted but let's just to look at the ones you posted. The majority of murder cases have no bail pending appeal, but you found some which have some extraordinary circumstances, some completely irrelevant to OP:
First case: if you read the actual judgement on his bail (
http://www.saflii.org/za/cases/ZAECPEHC/2014/34.html), at point 9, you can see that this guy tipped the police off before the robbery and because this may likely result in an appeal being upheld, bail was granted.
Second case: the guy was actually REFUSED bail pending appeal twice. He was incarcerated straight after sentencing. He then tried again but was still denied. The court said "The general attitude of a court is that when an accused person is still awaiting trial and where there is no indication that the interests of justice might be prejudiced that such an accused person should be released on bail on suitable conditions pending his trial. The notion is underpinned by the presumption of innocence against any accused person, which exists in our law. However, once an accused person has been convicted and sentenced, the position changes radically, because the presumption of innocence against the accused is no longer applicable and the court now knows for a fact that an accused person has in fact been convicted. . ."
Then, only after the appeal against the original convictions were allowed, and the state chose not to file an opposition (which the judge seemes to imply was a mistake by the state calling it "unfortunate" and listing it under the condonation section) the judge gave leave. So this wasn't bail pending appeal at all.
Third case: bail was granted due to "a state witness who had implicated Mr Wolmarans and Mr Matshaba in Mr Phakoes murder stated after the trial that he had lied on the witness stand." and "the evidence on which the high court relied to convict his clients had glaring holes."
So these cases are rather unique.
And the other articles you posted imply that the norm is sending convicted murderers away to prison straightaway ("The basic rule is that the conviction and sentence are not suspended pending the appeal, so the appellant must go to prison ")
ETA: Masipa has conducted this trial as incredibly fair as she has to avoid this eventuality. If I can make an assumption, she probably had an inkling that OP was guilty as hell from the beginning and wanted to make sure he got the fairest of fair trials. Remember that there is a difference between bail pending appeal and bail once an appeal has been granted. I'm sure Roux will manage to secure an appeal process on a dubious ground or two but even then I doubt there will be sufficient likelihood of that appeal's success in order to sway any judge to grant leave while it's being processed, let alone before it's even been granted!
inocchio: