Van Breda’s legal representative advocate Pieter Botha challenged the admissibility of the statement, arguing at the time his client made the statement, which was hours after his family had been butchered, he was treated as a suspect and therefore had the right to remain silent.
This motion started a trial-within-a-trial, which ended with closing arguments yesterday.
It is the State’s case that Van Breda was a witness at the time the statement was taken, and therefore it needs to be admitted as evidence.
State prosecutor Susan Galloway said during Van Breda’s interview with Sergeant Clinton Malan, who took his statement, Van Breda was never threatened, assaulted or intimidated.
“To the contrary, the accused cooperated fully and never raised any of the issues now used in objection to the admissibility of the statement,” she said.
“It was not a case of assault by the police or threats which led the accused to make the disputed statement. The public might well lose respect for the judicial process if important evidence of this nature were to be excluded on what may be perceived as a technicality.”
Malan was the only witness the State called during the trial-within-a-trial.
Botha argued that while Malan maintained Van Breda’s statement was a verbatim version of what he’d said, grammatical and spelling errors proved it was a paraphrased version.
In 2006, Van Breda and his family emigrated to Perth in Australia. They moved back in 2014. He was therefore well-versed in English, Botha said.