Rex v Meiring

• Jurisdiction: South Africa
• Judge: Innes CJ, De Villiers JA, Kotzé JA, Wessels JA and JER De Villiers AJA
• Judgment Date: 11 October 1926
• Hearing Date: 21 September 1926
• Court: Appellate Division

Innes, C.J.:

The appellant was convicted in the Queenstown Circuit Court of culpable homicide for having wrongfully and negligently driven a motor car against or over Petrus Johannes Nel, and thereby caused his death. In the late afternoon of the

Innes, C.J.

4th December, 1925, he was driving a motor car in a southerly direction along Oxford Street, East London. In turning into Union Street, which runs at right angles to the main thoroughfare, he collided with a motor cycle driven by the deceased proceeding north along Oxford Street. As the result of the collision Nel received injuries from which he died. On the appreciation of the accused four questions of law were reserved under sec. 372 of Act 31 of 1917. Now before considering those questions I should like to point out that only legal questions can be reserved for the consideration of this Court under sec. 372; that misdirections on facts can never become questions of law though they may, under exceptional circumstances, amount to irregularities; and that, speaking generally, there is no appeal from the criminal verdict of a jury on the facts. To allege misdirection on facts, to have their effect reserved as questions of law, and thus to endeavour to set aside the verdict on the facts is not a procedure recognised by our Criminal Procedure Act .

Turning now to the questions reserved, the first is not a point of law at all. An extract from the summing up is set out which in effect told the jury that if they accepted the evidence for the to resist the conclusion that the accused had wrongfully caused prosecution as accurate it seemed to the presiding Judge difficult the death of Net, and that it did not seem to him to matter much whether they did or did not qualify the statements of the principal Crown witnesses by reference to the accused's own testimony. We are asked to decide whether these remarks did not amount to a misdirection. Now the Act (sec. 203), provides that the judge may, if he thinks proper, comment in the course of his summing up upon any question of fact or upon any question of mixed law and fact relevant to the proceeding. The remarks referred to constituted a comment which it was within the right of the Judge to make. No doubt it was strong, but it must be read in connection with the remainder of his summing up, and so read it could not be regarded as an irregularity justifying the intervention of this Court, even had an entry of an alleged irregularity been duly made under sec. 370.

The second reservation is more important, though unfortunately and obscurely worded: "Whether the presiding Judge, by his remarks set forth under I supra, did not encroach upon the function of the jury to decide whether the evidence for the

Innes, C.J.

defence revealed criminal negligence, especially as, in summing up, the Court omitted to direct the jury as to the degree of negligence requisite in a criminal or any case." The main portion of the entry covers the same ground as the first question which has been already dealt with. The latter portion is an argument in support of the first. It suggests that the presiding Judge erred in failing to direct the jury on the legal aspect of negligence. But as the entry was framed it was difficult to allow an argument upon that point. In reply to an enquiry from the Bench, however, counsel for the Crown consented that "the second question should be regarded as raising the question whether the Judge misdirected the...