An Aranos area farmer serving a 10-year prison term after being convicted of murdering his wife had another setback in the Windhoek High Court on Friday, when his attempt to appeal against his conviction failed to pass a first hurdle.
Jailed farmer Willem Barnard has no reasonable prospects of success with an appeal against his conviction, judge Naomi Shivute concluded in a ruling in which she refused an application by Barnard to be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court against the verdict that she delivered in his trial eight months ago.
Barnard will now petition the Supreme Court to ask that he be allowed to appeal against his conviction, defence counsel Louis Botes said after the delivery of the ruling.
Judge Shivute sentenced Barnard (65) to 18 years' imprisonment, of which eight years were suspended for a period of five years, on 25 July. He was also declared unfit to possess a firearm for three years after he completes his sentence.
Barnard was convicted after the judge found that it had been proven he murdered his wife, Anette Barnard (55), by shooting her in the head with a revolver at his Hardap region farm, situated between Aranos and Stampriet, on the night of 9 to 10 April 2010.
Barnard claimed during his trial that he had no recollection of shooting his wife. He said after a day of drinking, he fell asleep in the lounge of the farmhouse, where he and his wife had been watching television, and when he woke up, he found her lying with her head in a pool of blood on a coffee table. He concluded that she had shot herself.
However, based on testimony that Barnard told his son-in-law he had shot his wife, and that he also indicated he expected to be arrested and jailed over his wife's death by telling a police officer at the scene of the shooting that he would get someone to look after his farm in his absence, judge Shivute found that he was responsible for her death.
In the ruling she gave on Friday, the judge noted that two police officers who testified during Barnard's trial conceded there was a possibility that Anette could have shot herself. However, they did not provide the court with reasons on which they based their opinions, the judge remarked.
She also noted that a forensic scientist who testified that there were traces of gunpowder residue on both Anette Barnard's hands and on one of Barnard's hands, with the greatest concentration of residue on one of her hands, said he could not identify the shooter.
Having considered all of the evidence, she concluded that although Barnard had been intoxicated to some extent, he was in control of his mental faculties at the time of the incident, "but conveniently had a lapse of memory of the crucial event".
