WINDHOEK – State Advocate Marthino Olivier last Friday requested the Windhoek High Court Judge Christi Liebenberg to send Gerald Henly Matlata, 34, to prison for the rest of his life on convictions of murder, rape, robbery, housebreaking with intent to rob and robbery, theft and housebreaking.
Matlata was also convicted for the intent to rape and for rape.
According to Olivier, Matlata did not show any remorse and his guilty pleas were because of overwhelming evidence against him. In fact, Olivier said, the guilty pleas should be a neutral fact with no weight attached to it. According to him, the victims of Matlata were alone when he attacked them while they were living with other people, which could suggest that he stalked them contrary to the claim of Matlata’s State funded lawyer, Gert Appollus the offences were not pre-meditated or pre-planned.
With regard to the first offence Matlata said in his plea explanation that he was walking along the road in the vicinity of the complainant’s residence when he felt the urge to have sexual intercourse and he decided to jump over the wall and enter the property after realising the door was not locked.
According to him while he raped the complainant, she begged him to use a condom and even offered to give him her bank card and pin number to leave her alone, but he was just interested in having sex with her. “I told her that I was only interested in having sexual intercourse with her, so that I could feel how it felt like (sic),” he said.
Appollus said in mitigation of sentence that this shows that Matlata did not plan any of the attacks and that it was spur of the moment offences.
Olivier was however not impressed and wanted to know what the chances are that Matlata came across three women alone when he felt the urges for sex. He said a person’s home is where they should feel safe and added that it is an invasion of a person’s inner-most sanctity when you are attacked in your home. He further told the court that the after-effects of crime should be taken into accounts when it comes to sentencing especially an invasion into your inner-most sanctum.
“It will haunt you forever, you might learn to cope, but never forget,” he said.
This, Olivier said, was evident from the testimonies of the witnesses. He further said that Matlata also did not take the opportunity to apologise by taking the stand and testifying in mitigation, thereby taking the court into his confidence. According to Olivier, the offences Matlata is convicted of is “quite shocking and serious and deserves a lengthy period of imprisonment”.
Appollus told the Court that with the rape charges there is substantial and compelling circumstances that may allow the Court to deviate from the prescribed sentence of 15 years on each rape conviction.
He asked the Court to sentence Matlata to 10 years in prison for the murder, not less than eight years for the rape counts, ten years on the robbery counts, two years on the attempted murder counts and 18 months on the theft count. He further asked the Court to order the sentences to run concurrently.
Judge Liebenberg said he will deliver sentence on September 18 at 10H00.