Percy Yutar

Percy Yutar (29 July 1911 – 13 July 2002) was South Africa's first Jewish attorney-general. He was one of eight children in a family of Lithuanian immigrants (his father's original name was "Yuter"). He secured Nelson Mandela's conviction and sentence of life imprisonment.

Percy Yutar was born in the Cape Town suburb of of parents who had come to South Africa from the ghettos of Lithuania, like the majority of the country's once large Jewish community. Percy was one of eight children and money was scarce. As a young man, he had to work in his father’s butcher shop.

Yutar attended the University of Cape Town on a scholarship, and in 1937 received his doctorate in law. But despite his education, given the prevalence of antisemitism in South Africa at the time, he had to work, for five years, in a lowly legal position at the post office. In 1940, he was appointed a junior state prosecutor and eventually become Deputy Attorney General, first in the Orange Free State, and later in the Transvaal.

Yutar was the prosecutor in the 1963 Rivonia Trial against Nelson Mandela and 9 others. Yutar charged the defendants with sabotage and conspiracy, instead of the more serious crime of treason. Mandela and 7 co-defendants were convicted, while two were acquitted. During sentencing, Yutar argued that the full weight of the law should be brought to bear on the defendants, but did not specify whether he believed the defendants should be executed or sentenced to prison. Since the death penalty was rarely used for sabotage and conspiracy, Justice Quartus de Wet sentenced the defendants to life in prison. Anti-apartheid activists condemned the guilty verdict, but were relieved that Mandela had not been charged with treason and would not be executed.

...
Wikipedia