In the Shadow of Sharpeville : Apartheid and Criminal Justice

The authors take a scalpel to South Africa's system of criminal justice during the Apartheid era. They focus on the case of the Sharpeville Six to analyse how criminal justice was used to make convictions easy to secure. Analysing the technicalities of the criminal law, as well as the quality of evidence and judicial reasoning in the case against the Six, Parker and Mokhesi-Parker also convey vividly through letters from death row, the sense these people made of their impending executions and how an international campaign to save their lives succeeded with only 18 hours to spare. Front Matter....Pages i-xviii Introduction....Pages 1-9 White Rule and Black Resistance....Pages 10-32 The Law and the State....Pages 33-48 Apartheid’s Criminal Law....Pages 49-93 Judges and Torture....Pages 94-110 The Trial of the Sharpeville Accused....Pages 111-122 The Prosecution Case....Pages 123-130 How the Defence Replied....Pages 131-143 The Judge’s Contribution....Pages 144-150 The Nature of the Judgment....Pages 151-165 The Sentence of Death....Pages 166-180 The Record of the Appeal Court....Pages 181-205 Gaol and Death Row....Pages 206-247 The Families and their Pain....Pages 248-259 The Fight for Justice....Pages 260-292 Conclusion and Epilogue....Pages 293-304 Back Matter....Pages 305-381 Annotation This book takes a scalpel to South Africa's system of criminal justice during the Apartheid era. It focuses on the case of the Sharpeville Six to analyse how criminal justice was biased to make convictions easy to secure. The book analyses the technicalities of the criminal law, as well as the quality of evidence and judicial reasoning in the case against the Six. It also conveys vividly through letters from death row the sense people make of their impending execution and how an international campaign to save their lives succeeded with 18 hours to spare