Palace of Justice

43

There was three-quarters of an hour still to go before the lunch break. James Murray stood up to face Labuschagne in the witness box a few feet away.

‘No one briefed the prisoners in the Pot about what was to happen to them during the hour between six and seven o’clock on the day of their execution, is that correct?’ I noticed that Murray had avoided calling Labuschagne by his name.

Labuschagne looked perplexed. ‘I don’t understand what you mean by briefed.’

Murray sighed. ‘What it means is that no one explained beforehand to the prisoners exactly what was going to happen during that hour. They were simply woken up, told what to do, how to dress, where to go, where to stand and so on. They were told what to do only at every step, right up to when they were on the trapdoors, but not before.’

Labuschagne nodded his agreement to every fact that Murray listed, and then added, ‘No, not really.’

‘What do you mean, not really?’

‘Well, they were told there would be a service for them before, and a service after.’

‘But they weren’t told that they were going to have to put on their day wear without shoes, socks and underwear?’

‘No. They were told in the morning.’

‘Nor that they would be fingerprinted to make sure that the right person was going to be hanged?’

‘No.’

Murray held his hand up with his fist closed. ‘Nor that their hands were going to be cuffed behind their backs.’ He raised one finger and Labuschagne nodded as he did so. ‘Nor that a white hood would be placed over their heads.’ He raised another finger. Labuschagne nodded again. ‘Nor that they would have to stand on the painted footmarks on the trapdoors.’ He straightened his middle finger. ‘Nor that the rope would be put around their necks and that the lever would be pulled without another word.’ The ring finger and little finger joined the others.

‘No,’ said Labuschagne. ‘What would be the point of telling them?’

Murray ignored the question but provided an answer of sorts in any event. ‘You rushed them from one place to the next until they were on the trapdoors, and then the lever was pulled?’

‘Yes.’

‘None of the black warders was involved in the execution process, is that right?’

Judge van Zyl looked up in surprise. Then he looked at the defence table. There was no denial from our quarter. I simply didn’t know the answer since the topic had never come up during our preparation. I wondered where Murray was going with it. I didn’t have long to wait.

‘No,’ said Labuschagne. ‘They refused.’ It was an unnecessary elaboration, and it could be used against him.

Murray saw that and quickly exploited the opportunity. ‘So they refused to take part in the execution process, did they?’

‘Yes.’

‘But you did not?’

‘No.’

The court fell silent while the ramifications of this disclosure were considered around the room. Labuschagne was the first to find words, but he came across as spiteful and cocky.

‘The real reason why black warders were not involved,’ he said, ‘is that the Warrant Officer didn’t trust them.’

‘And the reason you didn’t refuse is that you were in favour of the death penalty, not so?’ The question was superfluous, but Murray had asked it. Now he had to accept the consequences of trying to argue his case in cross-examination.

‘I was in favour of it in the beginning, but I started to have doubts about it in the second year, and now I don’t know anymore.’

Murray pressed on. ‘And while you were in favour of it, you thought you were doing important work for the government?’

‘Yes,’ Labuschagne said defensively, and then with emphasis, ‘but it was important work. The Warrant Officer said so.’ He looked directly at the Warrant Officer, but the Warrant Officer wasn’t looking at anybody.

‘And you became a willing and active member of the team of warders, the special team chosen by the Warrant Officer to do the execution shifts, didn’t you?’

Labuschagne swallowed before he answered. He must have seen where the cross-examination was going. ‘Yes.’

‘And you felt special because you were entrusted with this special job?’

‘Yes.’

‘You were part of the whole execution process, weren’t you? Without your help they couldn’t do it?’ James Murray again invited an argument, a dangerous ploy, but the rewards could be high.

‘They could.’

‘Well,’ suggested Murray, ‘they would have had to get someone else to do your job, wouldn’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘That means your part was indispensable. Without you, or someone like you, the Executioner couldn’t carry out his own job, could he?’

‘Yes.’

‘That is what I meant earlier,’ Murray said while glancing at his notes. He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘You got used to this special work very quickly, didn’t you?’

‘I got used to it.’

‘This special work of killing,’ Murray added, glancing at the defence table, ‘you got used to it.’ It was a statement, not a question, the way he put it.

There was a very long pause before Labuschagne answered. Our briefing sessions had not prepared him for this line of cross-examination. ‘Yes.’

‘You thought those people deserved to die, didn’t you? Otherwise you wouldn’t have participated in the process of killing them, would you?’

It was a trick question and Labuschagne could see it. He hesitated. ‘I thought if the Court had sentenced them to die, then they deserved to die.’

‘So you thought you were helping the Executioner to administer to these people what they deserved, and that was death?’

‘Yes.’

‘And that must have made you feel important and powerful?’

When the answer came after a long pause, it did not deal with the crux of the question. ‘No one except us knew about the work we were doing. Only we knew, so how could we feel important and powerful?’

‘Don’t ask me questions,’ said Murray. ‘You felt so special that you and your fellow escorts looked down on the new warders who fainted or became sick or ran away during the hanging, didn’t you?’

‘No.’

‘And you must have thought the same about the warders who worked in other sections of the prison and even those in other prisons.’

‘No.’ Labuschagne had reverted to monosyllabic answers.

Murray had not finished with him. ‘You knew that you were immune to prosecution. You were killing with the blessing of the law, weren’t you?’

‘Yes.’ The answer hung in the air.

Murray came back to his earlier point. ‘That must have given you a tremendous feeling of power, that knowledge that you could kill and not be prosecuted for it.’

‘We didn’t do the killing. The Hangman did.’

‘But you agreed you were an indispensable part of the process, just a minute ago you admitted that. Do you want to change your evidence?’ Murray was taking a risk with this style of cross-examination, but the rewards could be high too.

‘No,’ said Labuschagne.

‘So you were part of the killing process, weren’t you? And you were immune from prosecution because you were the State’s killers.’ Murray did not seem to realise that he had asked two questions. When Labuschagne hesitated, he insisted on an answer. ‘Well, what is your answer?’

‘I wouldn’t put it like that,’ said Labuschagne after another pause. ‘We all knew that nothing could happen to us if we did our job properly. The Warrant Officer told us that. He also said that we must not touch a prisoner during the hanging process and we were not even allowed to touch the prisoner in the pit room until the doctor had certified him dead. He said we could be prosecuted for murder or culpable homicide if we touched the prisoner. He said that only the Hangman had the right to kill the prisoners. He said that no matter what we did to get the prisoners up onto the trapdoors, it was the Hangman who did the killing. It was his hand that did the killing.’

That long answer opened up another line of cross-examination and Murray explored it without hesitation.

‘Yet you have told the Court that on more than one occasion you and other escorts had to pull a prisoner up by the rope and drop him again, haven’t you?’

‘Yes, but we did not touch them. We only touched the rope. That’s what the Warrant Officer told us to do.’

‘You hauled them up by the rope, is that what you say?’

‘Yes.’

‘That must have been very hard work, physically challenging even for strong young men like you.’

Labuschagne fell for the flattery, not seeing the point behind the question. ‘It was very tough. You try to lift something that heavy with your arms away from your body, up to the level of your shoulders; someone that squirms and kicks and jumps. You try it and see.’

‘But you were able to do it, and did it, more than once,’ Murray suggested innocently.

‘Yes.’

‘And then you dropped them again, so that their necks would break cleanly, didn’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘And one, you said, you had to haul up twice before his neck would break cleanly, is that right?’

It was a mistake on Murray’s part. Labuschagne had not said anything about pulling any prisoner up twice. But he didn’t notice the mistake in the question either.‘Yes, but there were a few like that. We had to pull them up twice.’

Wierda groaned beside me, but I thought that Murray’s error had made our case better.

‘So in those cases the hands that did the killing were not the Executioner’s, were they? They were yours.’ Murray had answered his own question.

‘We didn’t see it that way.’

‘Well. Let’s look at the facts, at what you yourself have told the Court. The Executioner pulled the lever …’

‘Pushed,’ said Labuschagne. ‘He did not pull the lever, he pushed it.’

Murray was nonplussed. ‘It doesn’t matter whether he pushed or pulled the lever, but his hand did not cause the prisoner’s neck to break. Your hands did, didn’t they?’

I rose to object and Murray sat down quickly. ‘M’Lord, with respect, the question is actually an argument, not a question the witness can answer.’

Judge van Zyl didn’t wait for Murray’s response. ‘Well, you’ve told us on more than one occasion that the defendant’s state of mind was relevant, and that every piece of evidence, every event that had a bearing on his state of mind is relevant and admissible. And I have allowed the defence a lot of leeway on this. It seems to me that this evidence is relevant to the defendant’s state of mind. I would like to hear the answer.’

Murray nodded enthusiastically as the Judge quoted my own words back at me. I muttered, ‘As M’Lord pleases,’ and sat down. I was not being sarcastic, but I was sure the Judge had been. I had given him the opportunity to overrule an objection, and he had grabbed it with both hands. I decided not to intervene again. Labuschagne would have to sink or swim on his own.

Murray reminded Labuschagne of the point, but with a slightly different emphasis so that the answer would suit his case either way. ‘Surely you can see that it was your hands that did the killing in those cases where you hauled the prisoner up and dropped him down again until he was dead?’

‘We didn’t see it that way. We didn’t touch them,’ Labuschagne added. The distinction was important to him.

‘You didn’t ask the Warrant Officer why you had to haul the prisoner up and drop him again, why the Executioner couldn’t finish the job himself?’

‘Sir, Oom Doepie is an old man. He could never do it himself.’

Neither the Judge nor Murray reacted to the use of the name.

‘You could have left the prisoner hanging on the rope until he was dead, couldn’t you?’ Murray suggested.

‘We had other work to do. We could not hang around there waiting for him to die. It could take a long time. The whole idea was to make them die quickly.’

The Judge was about to say something when Labuschagne added, ‘Anyway, the Warrant Officer said we had to do it because the sentence of the Court was death by hanging, not death by strangling.’

‘It’s not quite as simple as that, is it? You physically raised the prisoner to the right height and then dropped him again?’

‘Yes.’

‘And your purpose was to cause his neck to break, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘So that he would die, yes?’

‘Yes, so that he would die quickly and painlessly.’

‘And that is exactly what then happened, isn’t it? They died quickly and, you assume, painlessly?’

‘Yes.’

‘Exactly as if the Executioner had broken their necks when he pulled …’ Murray had to correct himself, ‘or rather, when he pushed the lever?’

‘Yes.’

The Judge intervened. ‘Mr Murray, where is this going? You’ve made your point, surely?’

I also thought Murray had made his point, but he had not yet succeeded in his secondary purpose with this line of questioning, which was to unsettle Labuschagne, to soften him up for the cross-examination that was still to follow.

Murray was diplomatic. ‘I’ve nearly finished with this topic, M’Lord.’

‘Continue,’ said Judge van Zyl and Murray wasted no time.

‘When the prisoner’s neck broke after the trapdoors had opened, you saw the Executioner’s hand as the one that had done the killing, didn’t you?’

‘Yes. It was his hand.’

‘And by the same token, when you hauled the prisoner up, dropped him down and his neck broke, it was not the Executioner’s hand that did the killing, was it?’

‘I see what you mean,’ Labuschagne conceded, looking down at the floor.

‘So it was your hand that did the killing.’ Murray turned to his left towards Sanet Niemand and let the statement hang in the air. The answer did not matter. Labuschagne’s own evidence now showed him to be capable of killing, with his own hands.

Labuschagne didn’t have to answer.

It was time for lunch, but Murray was keen to strike another blow.

‘And it was your hand that did the killing at the reservoir, wasn’t it?’

Again Labuschagne did not have to answer.

Labuschagne was taken back to Cell 6 and Wierda and I at first headed for the Square, but changed our minds to walk around the building. Wierda hadn’t spoken to me since before the tea break.

‘What’s up?’ I asked him when we got to the first corner. ‘Are you cross with me?’

Wierda sighed heavily. He didn’t look at me. ‘I don’t know how you could have done that to him. Why didn’t you give him some warning that you were going to do that?’

It was one thing getting this from Antoinette, but quite a different matter coming from my own Junior. Wierda was supposed to be above the emotion of the moment. Still, with him I could argue the point, and I did.

‘It would have been less effective if he knew what was coming. He would have been unconvincing. He would have sounded prepared, artificial, unemotional, and unpersuasive.’ I ran out of words to describe Labuschagne’s emotional flatness when he had to deal with matters involving his emotions.

‘Maybe, but it would have been less traumatic for him, and for his parents too.’

It was my turn to sigh. I saw that I couldn’t win this argument so I just changed the subject. ‘What’s the next case about? Is there anything we can use?’

‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s just another cell murder.’

We strolled along in the sunshine. I took in more of the features of the Palace of Justice.

‘So tell me about the cell murder,’ I said. ‘Anything special about the case?’

‘Nah,’ he said, ‘it’s a common Cape Town prison case.’

We walked slowly as Wierda briefed me on the events that had taken place in the Allandale prison near Cape Town and gave rise to seven men from that cell being hanged in Pretoria on 9 December 1987.

I interrupted him when we were behind the building. ‘Why is the dome so low? I thought the whole idea of a dome was that it should dominate, but this one is almost obscured and the towers at the corners are inconspicuous too.’

Wierda’s response was immediate. ‘They added an extra floor after the architect had completed the design, but they wouldn’t allow the expense of raising the dome and towers to compensate and to get the proportions right. That nearly broke the old man, my grandfather said.

‘And look at this monstrosity here,’ Wierda said, ‘just look at this building here.’ He pointed to a building in the back courtyard of the Palace. ‘That should be open space, a park, but they allowed the police to build a seven-storey building there. It looks crap, doesn’t it?’

I had to agree with him. We returned to our discussion of the cell murder case.