Dippenaar loses High Court application to seek leave to overturn sentencing
Staff Reporter Informante
JANDRÉ Lodewyk Dippenaar, who was seeking leave to appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn his murder conviction and sentence, suffered another blow after the High Court dismissed his application.
Dippenaar is the first man in Namibia to be convicted and sentenced for murder with direct intent (dolus eventualis) arising from a car accident, instead of culpable homicide, which is usually the case in motor vehicle accidents.
In August 2024, Dippenaar was sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment after being convicted on six counts of murder and other charges in connection with a car crash in December 2014 in Henties Bay. The accident claimed the lives of three members of a German family who had been on holiday in Namibia, namely husband and wife Markus and Stephanie Joschko and their daughter Alexandra. Three people in the vehicle driven by Dippenaar also perished in the crash: Dinah Pretorius, Charlene Schoombee and JC Horn.
In a court order delivered on 5 June 2026, High Court Judge Naomi Shivute dismissed an interlocutory application which sought condonation from the court for the late filing of documents and subsequently also dismissed the application for leave to appeal his conviction and sentence in the Supreme Court.
Dippenaar had initially appealed against the conviction and sentence handed down in the Swakopmund Regional Court to the High Court; however, that attempt was dismissed on 5 December 2025.
He subsequently filed the current matter, which sought leave to appeal the High Court judgment. In his heads of argument, he argued that the High Court ignored, or attached less weight to, the evidence of expert witnesses than to eyewitness testimony.
Dippenaar contends that the application is directed principally at the High Court’s approach to “the evaluation of defence expert accident-reconstruction evidence on point/place of impact (including gouge/scuff/physical indicia) vis-à-vis eyewitness accounts”.
The application for leave to appeal the High Court judgment had, however, only been filed on 31 December 2025, 12 days outside the prescribed time period.