I'm sorry Your Honour, the dog ate my evidence

So Jackie Selebi was supposed to bring receipts to court today to justify how he & his wife had arrived at their expenses budget they had previously submitted to the court.
Unfortunately for Mr Selebi, his very silly wife had conveniently 'discarded the slips' the day before because she apparently found 'better evidence' to back up their budget.
Not only did she throw the slips away, she also had the foresight to tear them up into little pieces before she discarded them, just in case someone would use them for fraudulent purposes, or perhaps incriminating evidence in a trail that is now a joke.
Obviously Mr Selebi has the same opinion of prosecutor Gerrie Nel (& the residing judge), as many school children around the world have of their teachers: one that assumes the person in authority is devoid of any intelligence & stupid enough to believe the old 'the dog ate my homework' tale that's been spun a million times before.
Clearly Mr Selebi is confident that he will get off scot-free, otherwise he'd be spinning more convincing lies.