Oscar Pistorius has been cleared of premeditated murder, and the 25 year sentence that it carries. The judge said: “The state has not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of premeditated murder. There are just not enough facts to support such a finding.”
Judge Masipa also said there was not enough evidence to prove that he was guilty of murder.
She started delivering her verdict on Wednesday morning, and will address the charge of cuplable homicide, similar to manslaughter in the UK, which carries a maximum 15 year sentence, in the afternoon.
Here is how she addressed some of the other key points of the case earlier in the day:
Bad news for prosecution
The prosection have tried to argue that Oscar Pistorius should be found guilty of premediated murder. But at the start of her summing up, the judge cast doubt on a few key pieces of evidence and testimony.
On Reeva Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius’s relationship, the judge said that Whatsapp messages showing conflict between the couple did not show anything out of the ordinary. Normal relationships are “dynamic and unpredictable most of the time,” she said.
Regarding the food matter found in Steenkamp’s stomach, the prosecution said that this cast doubt on Pistorius’s assertion that the couple had dinner at 9pm. But the judge said gastric emptying was “not an exact science”, and that it would be unwise for the court to read too much into it.
The judge also said that some of the witnesses had failed to separate their personal recollection of the incident, and what they had heard, or seen in the media. As well as casting doubt on witness testimony, it leaves the defence open to appealing the verdict.
She said that Dr and Mrs Stipp were wrong, and had actually heard a cricket bat hitting the door – not gunshots.
Two of the witnesses said that they heard screams, Michelle Burger and her husband Charl Johnson, but Judge Masipa said they were “unreliable”.
In fact, she said that she would base her own timeline of events on phone records, which were reliable.
Bad news for defence
Oscar Pistorius has always argued that he shot Reeva Steenkamp on 14 February, 2013, by mistake, and had always denied the prosecution’s charge of premeditated murder.
But Judge Masipa questioned Pistorius’s assertion that he fired without thinking, and rejected the defence argument of temporary insanity. She said that he was conscious when he fired the shots, and that she was satisfied that he could “distinguish between right and wrong”.
She also said that the situation Pistorius described on the night of the incident was “peculiar”, and questioned why the accused did not call out to see if Steenkamp was in the toilet, and why he fired four shot before running back to the bedroom.
On the defence argument that he armed himself because he felt vulnerable, and that he was in danger, the judge said that this was not a “reasonable” response, even for someone disabled who may feel less mobile.
And when it came to how Pistorius fared on the witness stand, the judge did not hold back. She said he was a “poor witness”, that he contradicted himself under cross-examination and evasive. She also said that this was in contrast to how he presented himself while being questioned by his own lawyer, Barry Roux.
No comments:
Post a Comment