Pistorius weeps as judge begins murder trial verdict

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Stephanie Findlay - Agence France Presse


http://i.imgur.com/VqsnAsQ.jpg

Pretoria (AFP) - "Blade Runner" Oscar Pistorius wept in the dock on Thursday as a judge began handing down her verdict on whether the star Paralympian was guilty of the Valentine's Day murder of his model girlfriend.

Judge Thokozile Masipa moved swiftly into her assessment of the almost 40 witnesses, apparently rejecting state evidence that pointed to an argument between the couple.

"Neither the evidence of the loving relationship or a relationship turned sour can assist this court to determine whether the accused had the requisite intention to kill the deceased," she said.

The judge also reviewed evidence by neighbours who testified of hearing shots and screams, saying many "had their facts wrong".

She said huge media coverage of the case could have affected some witnesses.

"I am of the view that they failed to separate what they knew personally or what they heard from other people or what they gathered from the media," she said.

Some interpreted her remarks as a blow for the prosecution, although she also cast doubt on the evidence of some defence witnesses.

And she said Pistorius himself in his evidence showed "a number of defences, or apparent defences".

After reading a list of contradictory statements in Pistorius's testimony, she said one assertion "is inconsistent with someone who shot without thinking".

Grimacing and sniffling, the 27-year-old celebrity sprinter watched as Masipa called Pretoria's High Court to order and read her verdict.

If found guilty of deliberately killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day 2013, he faces a life in South Africa's infamously tough prisons and notoriety that would forever eclipse his sporting achievements.

Pistorius is charged with one count of murder and three firearms offences.

Masipa restated the undisputed facts of the case -- Pistorius killed the law graduate and model when he fired four shots through a locked toilet door in his upmarket Pretoria home.

The sprinter doesn't deny this, but says he thought he was shooting at an intruder while Steenkamp was safely in bed.

The prosecution says he killed her in a fit of rage after an argument.

The verdict is the climax of a six-month murder trial that has cast a harsh spotlight on the fallen hero's private life.

Full of high drama, the trial has fed intense media interest worldwide, with live broadcasts veering into the realm of TV reality shows.

During proceedings Pistorius has broken down, weeping and at times vomitted as he heard how the 29-year-old blonde's head "exploded" like a watermelon under the impact of his hollow-point bullets.

On Thursday, a man selling papers on a nearby street corner said he couldn't keep up with the demand. "Maybe you can come later," said Thomas Mdlule, the 29-year-old vendor, rushing to count out change for his customers.

Inside the court Pistorius's sister and the implacable mother of the woman he killed looked on from the packed public gallery.

June Steenkamp arrived to the courtroom early on Thursday, accepting a hug from a supporter wearing a "Imprison for Reeva" paper pinned to her shirt.

- 'Obsessed with guns' -

Prosecutors have described the double amputee as an egotistical liar obsessed with guns, fast cars and beautiful women, who refused to take responsibility for his actions.

The court heard transcripts of phone messages in which the pair argued, Steenkamp texting: "I'm scared of you sometimes, of how you snap at me."

Defence lawyers sought to explain there are "two Oscars": a world-class athlete and a highly vulnerable individual with a serious disability who acted out of fear, not anger, when he fired the fatal shots.

If Masipa decides Pistorius deliberately murdered Steenkamp, he could face a life sentence, which in South Africa means 25 years in jail.

Masipa could also decide that Pistorius did not kill her intentionally, but did act recklessly, opening the door to a lesser charge of culpable homicide, which could still carry a prison term.

Any guilty verdict is unlikely to be the end of the case.

There will be more courtroom arguments before a sentence is handed down and, most likely, an appeal to a higher court.

"The trial is the first leg of a multi-legged legal process. It's just the beginning," said lawyer David Dadic.

Whatever happens, Pistorius's glittering sporting career is likely to be over.

Once a poster boy for disabled sport, he has been stripped of lucrative endorsement deals by global brands and has withdrawn from all competition.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Stella Mapenzauswa


PRETORIA (Reuters) - A South African judge cleared Oscar Pistorius of premeditated murder on Thursday, saying prosecutors had failed to prove the Olympic and Paralympic track star explicitly intended to kill his girlfriend on Valentine's Day last year.

Although she described the 27-year-old as a "very poor" and "evasive" witness, judge Thokozile Masipa said this did not mean the track star was necessary guilty in a case that she said was based entirely on circumstantial evidence.

"The state has not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of premeditated murder," Masipa told the Pretoria High Court. "There are just not enough facts to support such a finding."

The decision will be a relief to Pistorius, who would have faced a mandatory life sentence - effectively 25 years before parole - but he could still be convicted of a lesser murder charge, or culpable homicide, both of which could carry lengthy jail terms.

As the 66-year-old Masipa began her methodical review of the 41-day trial and the charges - murder and three lesser, unrelated firearms offences - a pained and forlorn Pistorius bowed his head in the dock, tears welling up in his eyes.

Masipa, only the second black woman to rise to the bench in South Africa, has remained impassive throughout the often dramatic and gruesome court proceedings, seemingly impervious to the global interest in a case that has drawn comparisons to the 1995 murder trial of American football star OJ Simpson.

In one early blow to Pistorius, Masipa said defense allegations of police contamination of the crime scene "paled into insignificance".

However, as she drew up a detailed timeline of the shooting of model Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine's Day last year, she questioned the reliability of state witnesses, including that of a neighbor who testified to hearing screams of a woman.

She also rejected a mass of instant messaging evidence presented by both prosecution and defense to suggest, respectively, that the couple's relationship was on the rocks or loving and strong.

"Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable most of the time, while human beings are fickle," she said. "None of the evidence of a loving relationship, or a relationship turned sour, can assist this court."

She then turned to crux of the case - the precise moment Pistorius fired into the door - analyzing what she termed the "number of defenses or apparent defenses" presented by the 27-year-old for evidence of his intent to kill.

She said there was inconsistency about Pistorius's account of what was going through his mind when he pulled the trigger.

[Goofy]

:villagers:

[Teh One Who Knocks]

By Nastasya Tay - Yahoo! Sports


PRETORIA, South Africa – After 41 days of testimony spanning more than five months, a verdict in the Oscar Pistorius trial has been handed down: guilty of culpable homicide, a ruling that comes with no minimum jail sentence.

Judge Thokozile Masipa handed down her decision Friday, a day after revealing to a packed courthouse and worldwide television audience that no, she would not find Pistorius guilty of murder – premeditated or otherwise. Instead, her determination is that the death of Reeva Steenkamp in the early morning hours of Valentine's Day last year was a tragic accident; that while Pistorius "acted hastily and used excessive force," he did not show intent to kill his girlfriend.

Asking Pistorius to stand, Masipa read her decision.

Not guilty of murder. "Instead," Masipa said as Pistorius, reactionless, looked on, "he's found guilty of culpable homicide."

As Masipa read the verdict, Steenkamp’s parents remained silent, their faces drawn. Steenkamp’s cousin Kim began sobbing in the public gallery.

Pistorius also faced three counts of gun charges – two for discharging a gun in public, one for illegal possession of ammunition. Masipa found him guilty of one of those charges – negligently handling a firearm in a restaurant.

Per South African law, the verdict of culpable homicide carries a maximum sentence of 15 years, but does not call for a minimum sentence. The gun charge carries no minimum sentence, meaning Pistorius could receive no jail time whatsoever.

As court adjourned briefly for the judge to finalize sentencing hearing dates, Pistorius sat alone, silent and pensive, his head bowed in the dock. Joined by his sister Aimee, who laid her head on his shoulder, he leaned against her and closed his eyes.

Outside the courtroom, Jackie Mofokeng, a spokeswoman for a provincial branch of the ANC Women’s League, said the Steenkamp family is "not happy."

"They are not in a good state," Mofokeng said. "They are not happy their daughter is no more."

She continued: “It’s a sad day for women of this country and actually for all of us, to actually be coming up with a judgement like this. For us it’s a miscarriage of judgement. ... We’ll see what happens to the culpable homicide, how many years is the man going to get. But if judgements like this will be going on now and then, our women in the country and our daughters are not safe.”

Court will now be postponed until Pistorius' defense is ready to present their arguments for the mitigation of his sentence, with the prosecution likely countering with a push for an aggravation of the potential length of his prison time.

Legal experts say the arguments that follow could potentially constitute a "mini-trial" of sorts, with both sides able to lead evidence, request expert reports, or call witnesses to the stand – even previous witnesses including Pistorius himself – in their efforts to influence Masipa's decision. The prosecution can put a Steenkamp family member in the box as part of their argument for aggravation of sentence.

In deciding against the premeditated murder charge, Masipa said in her summation Thursday that the prosecution "failed to show requisite intention to kill the deceased, let alone premeditation."

Also on Thursday she dismissed a charge of dolus eventualis – the grey area between premeditated murder and culpable homicide – on the grounds that Pistorius, in her determination, did not subjectively foresee killing whoever was behind the locked bathroom door on Valentine's Day morning last year.

In finding Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide, Masipa explained that "the accused acted negligently when he fired shots into the toilet door knowing that here was someone behind the door and that there was very little room to maneuver.

"A reasonable person," she continued, "therefore in the position of the accused with similar disability, would have foreseen that possibility that whoever was behind the door, might be killed by the shots, and would have taken steps to avoid the consequences, and the accused in this matter failed to take those consequences."

For now, any murder conviction is out. The prosecution can appeal the decision and, if they do, Pistorius could still be convicted of murder, according to legal experts contacted by Yahoo Sports.

There has been much controversy, particularly amongst South Africa's legal community, about Masipa's ruling and interpretation of the law around the concept of dolus eventualis, that instead of finding him not guilty because he did not forsee that his actions could result in death, he should have been found guilty because he should have forseen the consequences of his actions, but recklessly proceeded anyway.

If Masipa hands down a stiff sentence for the culpable homicide verdict – sentencing is expected in the next few weeks – it's unlikely the state will appeal.

"We believed, of course, and we still do, that there was sufficient evidence on the premeditated murder, and also on the charges upon which the accused was acquitted," National Prosecuting Authority spokesperson Nathi Ncube said outside the courtroom. "But we accept that this is where we are today and of course we will have to wait until the sentence is imposed to make further comments."

Asked about a possible appeal, Ncube said, "At this point it would be too early to comment on that. We would have to wait until the case itself is finally concluded, in other words, until there’s a sentence for us to consider our options.”

While the decision still means Pistorius could spend a significant amount of time behind bars, it is not the murder conviction the prosecution pressed for all along. The Blade Runner has maintained from the beginning that this was a tragic accident, that he shot Steenkamp in a moment of terror, believing he was protecting them both from an intruder.

Judge Masipa took more than a month to reach her decision, with the aid of her two assessors: after a 6-month trial, dozens of witnesses, tears, accusations and more than 4,000 pages of evidence.

Over 41 days in court, the world – watching a trial broadcast live on television, on Twitter, on the radio, online – saw a different side to South Africa's former golden boy.

We watched his stammering apology to a stony-faced June Steenkamp, Reeva's mother, in the front row of the public gallery. "There hasn't been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven't thought about your family," he told her in front of the court. "I wake up every morning and you're the first people I think of, the first people I pray for. I can't imagine the pain and the sorrow and the emptiness that I've caused you and your family.

"I was simply trying to protect Reeva. I can promise that when she went to bed that night she felt loved."

We listened to his hysterical screams of shock as he shielded his eyes from a close up photograph of his girlfriend's bloodied head wound, as it flashed up unexpectedly on a screen centimeters from his head.

We watched him weep repeatedly, wiping tears from behind his glasses as he listened to his private WhatsApp conversations with his girlfriend – arguments, kisses and lovers' names – laid bare to the world.

We watched him double over in the dock, retching into a bucket, as forensic pathologist Gert Saayman described the injuries his 9mm Taurus had inflicted on Reeva Steenkamp, the "Black Talon" bullets "mushrooming, causing maximum damage to soft tissue."

We were told, without his hefty prescription medications, that he was a suicide risk.

We watched him break down as he read his first and only "I love you" from Steenkamp, written on the Valentine's Day card he opened in the days after he shot and killed her.

We watched his frustration with "Bull Terrier" prosecutor Gerrie Nel during his extensive cross examination turn into petulance, then anger, then sober-faced reticence.

We watched him resoundingly deny having pulled the trigger on a friend's gun as it accidentally discharged in a busy Johannesburg bistro, despite a ballistics expert's testimony that it was the only way it could have gone off.

We watched his indignation as he listened to ex-girlfriends and former friends testify against him – only to accuse them of lying when he took the stand.

We listened as the details of the workings of his mind were read aloud, from experts ordered to assess his mental health, of the "two Oscars": a confident global icon triumphing over all adversity, spurning pity; and a scared, young man anxious about crime, trying to conceal his vulnerability.

We watched him unstrap his prostheses in public, expressionless, for strangers to examine the damage to his stumps.

We saw photographs of him, his home, covered in Steenkamp's blood.

We watched Nel attack his character, his ability to take responsibility, his desire to tell the truth.

While Masipa considered Pistorius to be a "very poor witness," she ultimately determined that he bears no onus to prove his innocence, that it is the state's job to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and that, in her opinion, the prosecution did not do.

Their case against Pistorius was built mainly on circumstantial evidence that was, in her words, "inconclusive" and not enough for a court to use to make any "inferences."