Lotter Judge is one tough taskmaster

The fate of convicted parent slayers Hardus and Nicolette Lotter and her former boyfriend Mathew Naidoo lies squarely in the hands of Durban High Court Judge Shyam Gyanda.

What sort of punishment they should get has been debated on radio talk shows and in the media in anticipation of their sentencing early next week. They were found guilty of the murders of Johannes and Magdalena Lotter, at their Westville home on July 19, 2008.

Judge Gyanda, who has been on the bench for 11 years, has presided over some prominent criminal cases and has handed down many life sentences.

He has also shown leniency. In 2004 he sentenced Aletta Elliot to five years in jail for the attempted murder of Annette Grobler, a former prostitute and her husband Robbie’s ex-girlfriend

Grobler died after Elliot gave her scrambled eggs laced with rat poison, before choking her. The State reduced the charge to attempted murder as the body was so decomposed no cause of death was found.

In passing sentence Gyanda said he had taken into account the hardships she had faced in her life including her difficult relationship with her husband who had dumped her for Grobler.

Naidoo said after his conviction that he expected to be handed two life sentences when the court reconvenes on Monday for sentencing. But he continued to maintain his innocence.

Hardus was anxious about sentencing but said he was familiar with the prison system. “I am going to spend the rest of my life there. Wherever I go, I go with God,” he said.

On Monday Nicolette’s uncle Willem Lotter, a pastor at an NG Kerk in Cape Town, is expected to testify in mitigation of her sentence.

Naidoo appears to feel Judge Gyanda will punish him more harshly than the siblings, after describing him in his judgment as a “con artist” and a “pathological liar” who aimed to fleece them after making them believe he was the third son of God.

In his judgment, the judge referred to the 1978 Jonestown cult massacre in which Californian preacher Jim Jones murdered 276 children and 638 adults with cyanide-laced fruit punch.

Gyanda said in that “brainwashing” had been used to realign religious beliefs.

“When we are on the outside, looking at Hardus and Nicolette, we deliberate that there is no basis that they could be influenced by Naidoo, yet there are examples of it happening,” Gyanda said.

He said Naidoo in his prayer book had described himself as the son of God and referred to God as his father.

Clinical psychologist Prof Lourens Schlebusch testified that the siblings had been victims of religious programming and coercive persuasion which had reached cult-like dimensions.

Professor Shannon Hoctor, a professor of law the University of KwaZulu-Natal, said it would be interesting to see what Gyanda makes of Schlebusch’s evidence.

“From his remarks, he seems to have paid careful attention to it.

“This case is unusual, because it deals with issues of demons and spells and divinely directed conduct, and criminal law does not have a paradigm for the supernatural,” Hoctor said.

“Of course the issue is not so much about the means or belief systems employed but whether Naidoo really did have a measure of control over the Lotters,” Hoctor said.

In previous interviews Judge Gyanda said he had always wanted to be a judge.

After obtaining his law degree at the University of Durban Westville in 1978 he was admitted as an advocate in 1979. He joined the Heath special investigating unit as a senior legal advisor in 1999 and became a judge in the Durban High Court in 2001. - Independent on Saturday