The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Mark Scott-Crossley from South Africa. Calling this man a Knucklehead is being kind, he's a sick barbarian. Mr. Scott-Crossley and a man working for him were sentenced to prison yesterday in the death of Nelson Chisale. Mr Chisale was killed by being thrown to the lions in a South African game park.

Open Post/Trackback- Mudville Gazette, and Stop the ACLU

PHALABORWA, South Africa (AFP) - A court has sentenced a white South African to life in prison and his black accomplice to 12 years in jail for feeding a black farm worker to lions.

Mark Scott-Crossley, 37, a white building contractor, and farm labourer Simon Mathebula, 43, were in April found guilty of murdering Nelson Chisale, whose bloodied remains were found in a lion reserve near the famed Kruger National Park.

Judge George Maluleke of the Phalaborwa circuit court sentenced Scott-Crossley to life imprisonment Friday but gave Mathebula 15 years, of which three years were suspended.

The state had called for life imprisonment for both men, citing the exceptionally gruesome nature of the crime that took place on January 31, 2004 near the northeastern city of Hoedspruit.

Scott-Crossley, who minutes earlier married one of his prison visitors at a nearby courthouse, showed no emotion as the sentence was read out at the hearing.

"We did expect a heavy sentence," Scott-Crossley told journalists following the sentencing.

"We are sorry that the family didn't accept our offer of financial compensation. It was not an effort to try and bribe them, but we really feel sorry for them and we are going to fight the sentence," he said.

About 100 people packed in the courtroom cheered and ululated after the sentence was read, while Chisale's niece Fetsang Jafta declared "I'm satisfied with the outcome."

During the trial that opened in Phalaborwa in January, a year after the murder, a judge heard that Chisale was savagely beaten with pangas at Engedi farm where he had returned to collect his belongings, two months after being fired for apparently running a personal errand during work hours.

Chisale was tied to a tree and later loaded onto a pick-up truck and driven to the Mokwale White Lion Project where he was thrown over a fence into a lion camp.