What happened
The appellant was convicted in the Wynberg Regional Court on several counts of sexual offences against children and sentenced to an effective fifteen years. The High Court acquitted him on three counts but kept the fifteen years on the rest, declared him unfit to possess a firearm and ordered his name onto the register of sex offenders. He was granted special leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Then his file went wrong. The notice of appeal was not lodged within the prescribed period, so the appeal lapsed. His attorneys applied for condonation of the late notice but never applied to reinstate the lapsed appeal, which is a separate thing. The record was filed late. The heads of argument were filed late. The State, for its part, did not comply with the rules on filing and serving its own heads.
What the court held
In Pace v The State [2026] ZASCA 132, handed down on 1 October 2026, the Supreme Court of Appeal found the explanation for the delays inadequate and said in terms that the appellant's attorneys had adopted a lackadaisical approach to the appeal. It criticised the State too. It held that it was not in the interests of justice to grant condonation, and struck the appeal from the roll.
Then it did something practitioners should note. Given the manner in which the appellant had been represented, the court directed that he would not be liable for the costs of the application, including professional fees and disbursements.
What it means for your practice
A late notice of appeal does not merely need condoning. Once the period passes the appeal lapses, and a lapsed appeal has to be reinstated on application. Condonation of the late notice on its own leaves nothing on the roll to hear. That distinction decided this case, and it is one a busy practice can miss when the file is treated as a diary entry rather than a sequence of rules with consequences.
The second lesson is what the court did about the representation. A client with special leave to appeal a fifteen-year sentence lost the appeal without a hearing because of his attorneys' delays, and the court's answer was to shield him from the fees and disbursements of the failed application. That is a costs order with the attorney's name on it in all but words, and it is the kind of finding that follows a practitioner into a Legal Practice Council complaint and a professional indemnity claim.
The third is that the court looked at both sides. The State's heads were late too, and the court said so. In a criminal appeal nobody is excused by the other side's untidiness.
What to do on your files
For every appeal on your books, check three dates against the rules of the court concerned: the notice of appeal, the record, and the heads. Where any has passed, apply for condonation and, where the appeal has lapsed, for reinstatement, in the same application and with a full explanation of every day of the delay. A thin explanation was the first thing this court held against the appellant.
Make the notice of appeal a step with its own deadline on the file, not a line in a letter. The lapse is automatic; the reinstatement is not.
If you have inherited an appeal file from another practitioner, read it against the rules before you do anything else. The court's costs direction here shows what a court will do when it finds that the client was failed, and it will not matter which firm's letterhead the delays sat under.
This note is drawn from the Supreme Court of Appeal's own media summary, which does not form part of the judgment; read the judgment before relying on it.
Source: Pace v The State (267/2024) [2026] ZASCA 132, Supreme Court of Appeal, 1 October 2026. The court's media summary: https://www.supremecourtofappeal.org.za/images/SCA2026-132ms.pdf