The State has lodged an application to appeal the conviction of Jeremy Sias and raised concerns about the judgement in the Meghan Cremer murder trial handed down by the Western Cape HIgh Court.
This emerged on Thursday as the State and defence teams appeared before Judge Elizabeth Baartman for arguments.
Sias was not at court. In her judgement, Judge Baartman found that the State had failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the former farmworker had murdered showjumper Meghan in August 2019.
The 30-year-old was strangled to death and robbed of her laptop, handbag, bank cards and Toyota Auris.
Sias claimed he found the car abandoned on the Vaderlandsche farm where Meghan had rented a cottage.
He claimed that only later that night he discovered her body in the car boot, and admitted to dumping Meghan in Philippi.
Judge Baartman found Sias not guilty of the murder, saying the State had failed to prove its case, after explosive testimony by the farm owner’s wife Linda Mohr, who outed Meghan as a druggie and presented WhatsApps as proof.
Mohr told the court that three “Malay” men came to the farm to watch Meghan as she trained, seemingly to intimidate her.
Sias was eventually convicted for two counts of theft and defeating the ends of justice and sentenced to an effective four years in prison.
In the judgement, Judge Baartman said she accepted that Sias found Cremer’s car abandoned.
On Thursday, State advocate Susan Galloway told the court that “an error” was made in attaching value to Mohr’s testimony.
Galloway said Mohr sat with her information for several years but never came forward.
She explained that during the trial, Mohr stated that “nobody was interested in her information”, yet evidence showed that she had in fact given police a statement at the time.
“She has this burning information about the deceased which points to [Meghan] possibly being involved in drugs and nobody was interested in her information. With respect, how does Mrs Mohr’s evidence gel with what James [her son] said?”
Defence advocate Bashier Sibda objected to the application saying the State “wanted a second bite of the cherry”.
He claimed there was backlash after the State failed to secure a conviction and claimed it approached the trial with a strategy to pin the murder on Sias.
Sibda highlighted an issue raised in the trial where an aspect of the admissions were changed to include the location of the murder, namely the cottage.
But, he said, CCTV footage showed Meghan’s car leaving the farm, and Mohr had identified the driver of the vehicle to be Meghan, and not “the killer”.
Sibda said the State prosecutor had every opportunity to recall witnesses after Mohr testified but had failed to do so.
Galloway protested, saying it was never the State’s case that Meghan was killed in the cottage.
The court will now await Judge Baartman’s judgement on the application.