‘And I saw it in the registers while I was waiting in the cells,’ he added.
James Murray tried to salvage what he could from the situation. If Labuschagne had ever had to use his rifle he would surely have mentioned it by now. ‘But you personally have never shot a prisoner, have you?’
‘No.’ He paused and added, ‘But I nearly shot a lawyer once.’
Everyone burst out laughing, except Labuschagne. I watched as Judge van Zyl whispered something behind his hand. I could work it out for myself. There have been many a day when I felt like shooting a lawyer myself!
Murray waited for the titter to settle down. ‘Yes, I know,’ he said. ‘That was when he strayed from the warder escorting him to the gate and you were on the tower with orders to shoot, wasn’t it?’ Murray showed that he knew more about Labuschagne than we might have thought.
Labuschagne nodded and Murray asked his next question, the moment of levity forgotten already. ‘But how could a prisoner escape with all those gates and locks and with all that re-enforced concrete and toughened steel bars and high walls? And with the keys being kept by different people?’
‘They couldn’t get out, but if they threatened a warder or tried to set fire to the place I would have to shoot them. There wouldn’t be anything else I could do from the catwalk. And we were told to do that.’
‘And no warder ever shot themselves on the premises?’
‘No, but they shot themselves when they were off duty.’
Murray reined him in again. ‘Please answer only what I ask you. If I want you to explain or elaborate I will ask you, understand?’ He stared at Labuschagne until he heard the answer.
‘Yes.’
The round went to Labuschagne, I thought, but I was secretly pleased that Murray had pulled him up short. I did not want Labuschagne to get too cocky or clever with his answers.
The next line of cross-examination had me baffled.
‘Are you suggesting that Mbele was not a suicide, that the warders had killed him?’
Labuschagne blinked. ‘Mbele? I did not say that.’
‘You suggested in your evidence-in-chief that his case was not a genuine suicide, didn’t you?’
‘No, I said the District Surgeon found injuries and things that did not agree with suicide, and that we were blamed for his death, that’s what I said.’
‘But by doing that you are suggesting that he did not commit suicide but was killed in the prison, by prison staff.’
‘I just told what I know. It happened exactly as I said.’
‘Well, let’s look at the matter from another angle. There was an open inquest at the Magistrates’ Court and you were one of the witnesses, right?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the Magistrate, after hearing all the evidence, including your own, returned a finding of suicide, didn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you have told us of the danger the prisoners in Maximum constituted not only to the warders but to each other. You said they were brutal, evil men who would kill you as soon as look at you.’
‘Yes.’
Murray half turned and conferred briefly with the Warrant Officer.
‘Mbele was a troublemaker, wasn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I suggest that the abdominal injury that the doctor found had probably been inflicted by one of the other prisoners; you cannot dispute that, can you?’
‘No, but I know we also gave him a hiding.’
Murray was on the verge of losing his temper. ‘Don’t speculate. You are to tell us only what you know.’
There was no answer.
Sanet Niemand handed Murray a note. ‘What do you say about Muller then, was that a genuine suicide?’ Murray asked. He pocketed the note.
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘He made it obvious, didn’t he, and even left you a note?’
‘Yes, in his shoe.’
Murray turned the pages of his notebook. ‘M’Lord, may I ask your indulgence to take a moment to speak to my Junior?’
‘Yes,’ said Judge van Zyl, ‘take your time.’
The courtroom was quiet for a while, then the Judge asked, out of the blue, ‘What do you do with prisoners like Muller, who want to commit suicide and at the same time appear to mock you?’
‘We play along, sir. There are many of them, especially the gangsters from Cape Town who play the fool all the time, even in there.’
‘What do they do, and how do you play along?’
‘They tease us and they mock us. They pretend to be very obedient but they say things behind their hands. For example, they would say, Ja, my Kroon, but add softly behind their hand, My Kroon se gat! And when you ask, Wat sê jy? they say, Niks nie, my Kroon. Others mock us by saying that the Hangman will never get them, like Muller, and they exercise their neck muscles and say, My nek is te taai vir die tou!’
‘You said you played along,’ said Judge van Zyl. ‘How did you play along?’
‘We hit them, but not hard, sir. And with the ones we saw exercising their neck muscles we added three inches to the drop, just to be sure.’
Murray and Niemand came out of a huddle with the Warrant Officer and the Judge called them to order. ‘Carry on when you’re ready,’ he said.
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.
&n
bsp; 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 see
ms 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?’
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