Durban — The Durban High Court will on Thursday hand down judgment in the trial against a Newlands East woman charged with the murder of her husband.
Mark Buttle was stabbed multiple times in the neck in 2018 while in his car in Newlands East, allegedly by his wife Analidia Dias Bella Dosantos, her lover Teagan Allison Brown, and the two women’s friend Charmaine Margaret Khumalo.
Dosantos and Khumalo stand trial without Brown who died in July before the trial started.
The three are alleged to have hatched and executed a plan to kill Buttle. An insurance policy is alleged to be the motive behind the murder, coupled with Dosantos, 41, alleged to have been having an affair with Brown, 25.
On Monday the State and the defence argued on the merits of the case.
The trial wrapped up last year after Dosantos’ cross-examination by the State.
During the trial when the State introduced a statement on the confession and pointing out by Khumalo, the defence opposed it. A trial within a trial got under way for the court to determine the admissibility of the evidence on the grounds that the accused was under undue influence at the time of making the confession.
Acting Judge Murray Pitman ruled the confession and pointing out inadmissible and they were not permitted in the trial.
Evidence that on the night of Buttle’s murder Brown and Khumalo pitched after midnight on the doorstep of another woman’s house with bloodied clothes did not form part of the evidence of the main trial. This was after a statement detailing all this was ruled inadmissible by Judge Pitman in a second trial within a trial.
The second trial within a trial came about after the defence for the two women objected to the submission of this statement made by Inga Ogle, who had since died, on the grounds that Ogle could not be cross-examined on the evidence in the statement.
Ogle was married to the daughter of a State witness, Shareen Ogle, who is Khumalo’s ex-lover.
During the trial, Shareen told the court that Khumalo had confessed to her about the murder. However, when Khumalo took the stand she denied this.
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Daily News