A man sentenced to 25 years in jail for money laundering has failed in his bid to be released on parole as part of President Cyril Ramaphosa’s proclamation to release ‘low-risk’ offenders to ease overcrowding in prisons during the Covid-19 lockdown.

A TimesLIVE report says the man – identified as A Meyer – was sentenced in August 2017 to 25 years’ imprisonment for fraud, forgery, uttering, and money laundering. The court ordered that Meyer serve a non-parole detention period which expires in February 2029.

He is also classified as a maximum-security offender.

He approached the Gauteng High Court (Pretoria) on an urgent basis asking it to declare that the President’s proclamation was ‘arbitrary, irrational and unconstitutional’. He asked the court to review and set aside the determination of the selected categories of the proclamation.

Meyer also asked that the wording ‘sentenced offenders who are at a high risk of death, owing to their medical conditions, and arising from the threat of contracting severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (Covid-19)’ be added in the proclamation. He produced a medical certificate proving that he is a blood pressure and high cholesterol chronic patient.

He contended that the risk of contracting Covid-19 in prison was ‘extremely’ high and the probability of death for those who were ill was also ‘exponentially’ high.

The TimesLIVE report says in dismissing his application, the court found that Meyer was wrong to argue that the President’s proclamation was arbitrary and irrational.

‘This submission by the applicant is not correct. As mentioned above, the purpose of the proclamation was to reduce the prison population in order to lessen practical difficulties experienced by the Department of Correctional Services in their efforts to prevent, combat and generally manage the Covid-19 disease,’ said Judge Pierre Rabie.

He found that the reduction of the prison population was not an arbitrary measure but one that was fully justified.

‘The decision to identify sentenced offenders who are low-risk offenders and who have served the bulk of their sentences was, in my view, a reasonable and rational approach, and the manner in which it was done was not arbitrary or irrational,’ Rabie found.

Full TimesLIVE report