Killer mom’s sentence reduced
|Published
Three judges of the Gauteng High Court said while they did not condone what the mother had done to her child, the judge who sentenced her in 2019 failed to substantiate why he imposed the maximum sentence. Welmarie Smith was sentenced in 2019 to life for the murder of her 3-year-old baby. Picture: Zelda Venter
A mother who received a lifeline for the murder of her three-year-old daughter has had her sentence reduced to 15 years.
Three judges of the Gauteng High Court said while they did not condone what the mother had done to her child, the judge who sentenced her in 2019 failed to substantiate why he imposed the maximum sentence.
Welmarie Smith, who was 39 when she was sentenced, also at the time received a further 25 years imprisonment for the prolonged assault of her daughter.
But on appeal, the court now substituted this with a five-year sentence and said 25 years for assault was totally out of proportion.
Her former husband, Willem Smith, the deceased Nicole’s father, was convicted of assaulting the child and he too received a 25-year jail sentence for this. He was not convicted of her murder as he was not home on the day when she died.
Judge Collis, who wrote the appeal judgment, noted that it is not known whether he ever appealed his sentence, but she said if not, he should be advised to do so.
During the trial, it was found that the child died after a final mother's blow to her forehead.
The mother claimed that the child had fallen out of her cot, but the court rejected this. The mother also claimed that the father had thrown a Marmite bottle at the child, which had hit her head previously and could have contributed to her death.
When the paramedics fetched the little girl at home after she had died, they noted various assault marks as well as cigarette burns across her body.
A pathologist told the court the child, who weighed 12kg when she died, was emaciated and had 18 different wounds and bruises to her body.
She also had a fractured leg which she had suffered sometime before her death and for which she was never treated.
Neither she nor her husband, from whom she is now divorced, admitted to the end that they had assaulted the child.