Dear Editor,
Acting Chief Magistrate Melissa Robertson-Ogle is one of those young professionals I admire, particularly the manner in which she dispenses her duties with great professionalism, without fear and with a passion to see justice being served.
However her recent decision to jail eighteen-year-old Theon Smith for sixty-one years came as a surprise to me. I have no problem with the magnitude of her sentence since I am an ardent believer in punishing people for their crime. But from a layman’s point of view I thought the state could have provided Mr Smith with counsel given the nature of his crime and the implications of his confession. This to my mind would have gone down well with the public.
Yours faithfully,
Bevon Currie
Editor’s note
While the prison time totalled 61 years, the Magistrate ordered that all the sentences should run concurrently, so that Smith will only spend fifteen years in jail.
