A Cape Town woman will serve an effective 10 months in jail after stabbing her husband to death during an argument.
|||Cape Argus - A Dunoon woman will serve an effective 10 months in jail for causing her husband’s death during an argument last year.
Sanah Booysen was sentenced in the Cape Town Regional Court to five years in terms of a section of the Criminal Procedure Act.
This means Booysen will have to complete several programmes in jail before, at the discretion of the correctional officer, part of her sentence can be converted to house arrest.
In a strange twist, after the sentence was handed down, Booysen asked magistrate Wilma van der Merwe to sentence her to 10 years in jail for the December 2012 crime that claimed the life of her husband, July Skiti.
Booysen’s lawyer, Nawaal Abdurhman, told the court she felt guilty for what she had done and would be satisfied with any sentence imposed on her.
When she testified earlier, Booysen asked that the court sentence her to life imprisonment.
But Van der Merwe would not hear Booysen further and ordered the case should stand down.
While delivering the sentence, Van der Merwe said a lengthy custodial sentence was not appropriate as Booysen’s life appeared to be unstable.
The probation officer’s report showed Booysen suffered from epilepsy and did not take her medication regularly. She also often disappeared from home for weeks.
Booysen was initially charged with murder, but the court found her guilty of culpable homicide based on her version that she stabbed her husband to get away from him during an argument.
The couple had been drinking that day and often stabbed one another during fights, Booysen testified earlier.
“It seems to me what happened that day was a culmination of years of violence between you and your partner,” Van der Merwe said.
“But what I must add is that although it boils down to a woman finding herself in an abusive relationship, you said on many occasions you dished out as good as you got,” Van der Merwe said.
Van der Merwe said Booysen’s case was an indication of what was happening in society.
She said of the 80 new cases before her, 62 were for violent crimes.
“It’s the court’s duty in a civilised society to bring a message that violence isn’t the answer in any situation and that it’s also not the way out,” Van der Merwe said.
Booysen has one previous conviction from than a decade ago for negligently causing her son’s death.
jade.otto@inl.co.za
Cape Argus