Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990 TAG: 9005260023
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A10 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA LENGTH: Medium
Jerry Richardson, 41, was found guilty of murdering 14-year-old black activist James Stompie Seipei Moeketsi on Jan. 1, 1989.
He was also convicted of assaulting and kidnapping the teen-ager and three black men, who testified that Mandela had beaten all of them with a whip and her fists on Dec. 29, 1988, and then allowed her bodyguards to continue the assaults. Winnie Mandela is the wife of black leader Nelson Mandela.
Richardson was also convicted of attempted murder in a case unrelated to Stompie's death. Supreme Court Justice Brian O'Donovan delayed sentencing Richardson until he receives a psychiatric report on Aug. 6.
O'Donovan, commenting on the evidence, said whips with traces of human blood were found in the house, and blood matching one of the surviving victims was found on walls and curtains of a room in Mandela's Soweto township home.
Stompie's decomposed body, with three stab wounds in the neck, was found in a Soweto field on Jan. 6, 1989. It was not identified until after community leaders got the surviving victims out of the house and the case became public.
O'Donovan ruled that most of the assaults occurred on Dec. 29, 1989. He added, "I find that Mrs. Mandela was present on the 29th. . .for at least part of the time." He said nothing else of her involvement.
Mandela has made no public statement on the case since last year, when she denied committing any crime or being home when any assaults took place.
The court also heard evidence that Nelson Mandela had sent his attorney to Mandela's home to try to get the three men released but had failed.
Nelson Mandela was freed Feb. 11 after serving 27 years of a life term for sabotage and plotting the overthrow of the white minority government. He is now deputy president of the African National Congress, the leading group fighting South Africa's apartheid system of racial separation.
Last year, leading black activists accused Winnie Mandela of complicity in the abductions and assaults, and they urged Soweto to shun her. A few months later, however, she reappeared on stage at anti-government rallies and has accompanied her husband in public since his release.
Nelson Mandela accused the government Wednesday of deliberately defaming his wife by not charging her in a case that centers on her. However, Mandela said he was not saying the government should prosecute her.
Eight former associates of Winnie Mandela, including her driver and other bodyguards, are scheduled to face trial beginning next week on charges of abduction and assault with intent to do serious bodily harm in connection with the same case.
If no extenuating circumstances are found for Richardson's actions, the death penalty is mandatory. However, President F.W. de Klerk suspended all death sentences in February as part of his program to encourage negotiations between the government and black groups. He is trying to bring blacks into the nation's political system.
Though denying involvement, Winnie Mandela has said the abductions were justified, claiming Stompie was staying at a church-run house where a Methodist priest was engaging in homosexual activity.
However, O'Donovan said there was no evidence of homosexuality at the church-run house. He said Richardson had given no explanation for the assaults on Stompie.
The witnesses testified Winnie Mandela had accused the teen-ager of having been a police spy when he led an organization of youth activists in the Orange Free State.
by CNB