[imagesource: Anthony Molyneaux]

It hasn’t been a good few months for Jason Rohde and his prospects of freedom.

His legal team had taken his fight all the way to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), which then rejected Rohde’s claims that his wife, Susan, hanged herself, finding that the State proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that he strangled her.

The unanimous ruling did state that Western Cape High Court Judge Gayaat Salie-Hlophe incorrectly found that Rohde had smothered his wife and punched her.

Instead, the SCA ruled that Rohde “unlawfully and intentionally killed the deceased by manual strangulation but did not assault her in any other way”.

Rohde killed Susan in a room at Spier wine estate in July 2016.

The court also ruled that his sentence be reduced from 20 years to 15 years, which is the prescribed minimum sentence for murder.

This week, Rohde suffered yet another legal setback, reports TimesLIVE:

Gayaat Salie-Hlophe, the Cape Town high court judge who convicted him, has dismissed the property mogul’s application for her to recuse herself from his bail application…

The 52-year-old got a minor reprieve after his lawyers succeeded in having his bail extended pending his appeal to the Constitutional Court. Rohde also applied for Salie-Hlophe’s recusal but she dismissed the application on Thursday.

Image: Facebook

Rohde said there is “an objective basis to submit that there exists a reasonable apprehension of bias warranting” her recusal.

In the appeal, Rohde outlined a number of issues he had with Salie-Hlophe, including her “emotive language” and her decision to amend a “previous media ban” regarding his children.

Salie-Hlophe said her previous decisions to deny Rohde bail and leave to appeal are not a good reason for her recusal in his current bail application.

“It is part of a judge’s training to treat each and every application and matter with an open mind which is ready to be persuaded based on new facts and the applicable tests and applicable legal principles and tests at that juncture,” she said in the judgment.

Rohde’s bail hearing has now been postponed until November 11.

Surely there can’t be many more legal avenues to take before he ends up behind bars to start serving those 15 years?

[source:timeslive]