Mariette Sonjaleen Bosch was sentenced to death by...

Mariette Sonjaleen Bosch was sentenced to death by the Botswana High Court at Lobatse, for killing Maria Magdalene Wolmarans the wife of Marthinus Johannes 'Tienie' Wolmarans, the man she later married, on June 26, 1996. Bosch, a forty-nine-year-old South African, maintained her innocence when she was sentenced to death. When Justice Aboagye pronounced the death sentence, she said: "I have not been able to find one moral extenuating circumstance. You are not very young, you were not drunk and you were not provoked by the deceased. The crime committed by the accused was carefully planned, carried out with evil motive, without mercy for an innocent victim who had done no harm." Bosch's attorney Edward Fashole-Luke II filed a notice of appeal with the Court of Appeal immediately after she was convicted. In his grounds of appeal, he mentioned that the "verdict was unreasonable and cannot be supported having regard to evidence." Bosch was being held in solitary confinement in Gaborone Central Prison whilst an appeal procedure that has in the past taken from three to 27 months is exhausted. If the appeal is unsuccessful, Mariette could apply for clemency from the President.