Ballistics expert Cpt Laurance Makgotloe has told the Madlanga commission that mistakes will continue to occur in forensic science laboratory reports because officers are pushing quantity over quality. The commission is probing allegations of criminality, political interference and corruption, and Makgotloe himself is accused of intentionally tampering with a ballistics report by backdating his amendments in the murder case of Vereeniging engineerArmand Swart. It is believed he tampered with the report to conceal the fact that the firearm in Swart’s murder involved criminal cartels and was also linked to more than28 othercases.
However, Makgotloe testified on Monday that what happened was a mistake and did not amount to gross negligence. “I would believe that those errors fall within this category [non-critical mistakes]. It cannot be incompetence, deliberate or negligence.
But as I have already indicated, commissioners, these errors will arise from time to time as long as there is still pressure at the lab. “The errors will always be there because we push quantities, not quality; not intentional errors,” he said. The Madlanga Commission of Inquiry continues to investigate corruption allegations within the criminal justice systemhttps://t.co/bsvrUBG5Q9 Makgotloe told the commission of the capacity and resources challenges faced at the labs.
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He also said there was a need to reform laboratories. “Commissioner, when I joined the laboratory 20 years ago, we used to receive few cases and today we are getting a lot of cases, and so many things haven’t changed [while] the cases themselves — the types of crime — are totally different. “Twenty years back we used to have pistols, and lately we have had a lot of rifle examinations.” He said the examination of those calibre of firearms was different, “but time allocated for you to work those cases remains the same.
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