Tag: pistorius trial
Oscar Pistorius Convicted Of Negligent Killing, Could Face Jail Time

Oscar Pistorius Convicted Of Negligent Killing, Could Face Jail Time

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

PRETORIA, South Africa — South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius, who was cleared of murder in the killing of his girlfriend, was convicted Friday on the lesser charge of culpable homicide.

Judge Thokozile Masipa accepted the athlete’s defense that he mistook Reeva Steenkamp for an intruder. But she found that he was negligent when he fired four shots into the door of a toilet cubicle where the 29-year-old model had locked herself in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year.
The judge asked Pistorius to stand to hear the verdict.

“The accused is found not guilty and discharged,” she said of the murder charges. “Instead he is found guilty of culpable homicide.”

Pistorius, who repeatedly broke down in tears during months of testimony, stood straight, staring ahead without showing any emotion.

Prosecutors had contended that Pistorius, 27, wanted to kill Steenkamp after they had an argument. South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority expressed its disappointment over the verdict and said it would make a decision about whether to appeal after sentencing.

Pistorius could face significant prison time — or none at all — depending on how reckless he was in the judge’s view. A sentencing hearing is scheduled Oct. 13, when the defense and prosecution will make submissions to the court.

Pistorius, a double amputee, won fame and adulation for running in the 2012 Olympic Games in London on prosthetic legs, attracting sponsorships worth millions of dollars. Sponsors abruptly dropped him after the murder charges, and he appeared to lose public support after his poor performance on the witness stand.

His acquittal on the murder charges raises the possibility that he might resume a sporting career. But the emotional frailty he showed throughout the trial, weeping frequently and vomiting on hearing descriptions of Steenkamp’s wounds, may have irreparably damaged the Pistorius brand that sponsors once clamored for.

Although Masipa concluded there was insufficient evidence to convict the athlete of murder, she found him guilty of a negligent, although unintentional killing, known in South Africa as culpable homicide.

“The conduct of the accused shortly after the incident is inconsistent with the conduct of someone who intended to commit murder,” Masipa said.
Pistorius shouted for help, called an ambulance and security, tried to save Steenkamp’s life, and prayed to God to save her.

“From the above it cannot be said that the accused did not entertain a genuine belief that there was an intruder in the bathroom who posed a direct threat to his life,” Masipa said.

She also said there was no evidence that Pistorius foresaw the consequences of firing four bullets into the cubicle.

Prosecutor Gerrie Nel asked Masipa not to extend the athlete’s bail because of the serious nature of the conviction. He noted that Pistorius was involved in “an incident” at a nightclub in July. He also argued that Pistorius was a flight risk, saying he had sold his two last properties, and that there was nothing to keep him in South Africa.

Defense lawyer Barry Roux conceded that Pistorius should not have been at the nightclub and knew that appearing in public “invites problems.” But he said Pistorius sold the property to cover his legal costs and that that move showed his respect for the legal system.

Masipa was not persuaded by Nel’s argument. Pistorius remained free on bail.

Masipa began Friday by acquitting Pistorius of an unrelated charge of recklessly firing a weapon out of the sunroof of a car. She said the prosecution witnesses, both former friends of Pistorius, contradicted each other and that one of them was dishonest.

The judge also acquitted Pistorius on a charge of illegal possession of ammunition.

However, Masipa convicted Pistorius of recklessly discharging a firearm in a public place, in connection with an incident at a crowded restaurant north of Johannesburg called Tashas. Pistorius said the gun went off in his hands. The judge said he should not have asked to handle a gun in a crowded place, and she accepted the evidence of witnesses that he was warned that the weapon was loaded.

Many South Africans were surprised that the judge, though she found that Pistorius was dishonest when he repeatedly insisted that he never intended to fire the fatal shots, still acquitted him of murder. Some legal analysts suggested that Masipa had made a mistake that could provide a basis for an appeal.

But Masipa cited a legal precedent cautioning a judge against a guilty conviction just because an accused person lied under oath.

After the court recessed for a short break Friday, Pistorius remained in his place for a few minutes, then stood up, alone, fiddling with notes, still showing no emotion. His sister, Aimee Pistorius, was the first to approach and comfort him. Other family members stood in their places, as though still digesting the news of Pistorius’ conviction.

His uncle, Arnold Pistorius, turned to journalists, saying the damage done to the athlete by the trial was “tragic” and could never be rectified.
Later, he delivered a brief statement to reporters expressing the family’s gratitude to the judge for acquitting Pistorius of murder and saying a huge burden had been lifted.

With his wife, Lois, beside him, he said the family never doubted his nephew’s account. He added that they were deeply affected by Steenkamp’s death and said their hearts went out to her family, friends and supporters.

The Steenkamp family sat talking quietly among themselves.

AFP Photo/Kim Ludbrook

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Defense Says Pistorius Was In A Vulnerable State When He Fired

Defense Says Pistorius Was In A Vulnerable State When He Fired

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

PRETORIA, South Africa — South African Olympian Oscar Pistorius should never have been charged with murder, but at most negligent killing, his lawyer Barry Roux told Pretoria’s High Court Friday.

Pistorius fatally shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who locked herself in the toilet off his bathroom in February last year. Pistorius fired four expanding bullets, designed to cause maximum tissue damage, through the door, killing Steenkamp, but he claims he mistook her for a burglar and never intended to fire the gun or kill anyone.

The state case is that he shot her after an argument — but the prosecution argues that even if he foresaw firing four bullets into the cubicle would kill a burglar, he’s still guilty of murder.

Roux said Pistorius was argumentative as a witness — and should not have been — but said he was anxious because the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, had originally accused him of putting on his artificial legs to fire the shots.

“Was he argumentative? Yes my lady. Should he have been? Absolutely not but he was apprehensive,” Roux said. He said there were “two Oscars”: The athlete’s powerful, confident exterior concealed a deeply anxious individual.

Roux conceded that Pistorius, who has pleaded guilty to charges of reckless use of a firearm, was negligent in handling a gun in a restaurant named Tashas, which went off in his hands, and suggested the Glock pistol may have been faulty.

Judge Thokozile Masipa chimed in that Pistorius asked to handle the gun.

Roux said the court had to decide whether Pistorius acted unconsciously, based on the athlete’s assertion he never intended to pull the trigger — or whether he acted reflexively but partly consciously.

He said the shot happened as the highly anxious Pistorius stood at the bathroom door, loaded gun in hand, knowing he might have to shoot.

“Now you’re standing at the door, you’re vulnerable, you have the effects of a slow burn over many years. You’re anxious. You’re trained as an athlete to react to sound. He stands now with his trigger ready to fire if necessary,” Roux said, bringing his hand down on his lectern with a dramatic bang.

He said some people would pull a trigger, startled by a sound, and others might not. Roux added that sports medicine doctor Wayne Derman, who argued that Pistorius pulled the trigger in response to being suddenly startled, was a highly credible witness.

Roux referred obliquely to South African cases where battered women successfully argued temporary insanity when, flooded with emotions, they snapped and killed their partners after years of abuse.

For Pistorius, there was a similar “slow burn” he said, which came from years knowing that he could never run away from a fight.

“You’re a little boy, you experience daily that you cannot run away. You do not have a flight response. Over time you get an exaggerated fight response. That’s the slow burn. That constant reminder, I do not have legs, I cannot run away. I am not the same,” Roux said.

He said this explained why Pistorius approached the noise he says he heard in the bathroom with a loaded gun, rather than retreating.

Pistorius testified he shot when he heard a noise from the toilet that made him think someone was coming out to attack him, although the door didn’t open.

“When he heard that sound in his vulnerable state,” asked Roux, “was that shot reflexive alone, or was it a reflexive shot combined with a cognitive process?”

If it was just a reflexive shot, it meant that Pistorius lacked criminal capacity at the time he fired, Roux said. (Temporary criminal incapacity is recognized by South African courts and means an accused was temporarily insane when he or she acted — but it is rarely successful.)

But Roux argued that if the court found Pistorius was consciously thinking when he fired, then it must examine the athlete’s thought process, as he sought to defend himself.

Summing up the defense case, Roux spent much of the day attempting to raise reasonable doubt about the prosecution’s contention that Pistorius killed Steenkamp after a row. He said the What’s App message that Steenkamp sent Pistorius saying he sometimes scared her, came amid many other loving messages.

Roux laid out a detailed timeline, designed to discredit the state’s case that the gun was fired at 3:17 a.m. The defense said the shots happened before 3:15 a.m. and that the sound of bangs at 3:17 a.m. was Pistorius breaking down the toilet door with a cricket bat to get Steenkamp. Neighbors reported hearing a woman screaming before 3:17 a.m.

Roux argued this was Pistorius screaming. The state’s main pathology witness said it would have been impossible for Steenkamp to scream after she was shot.

“Now the state must make the second sounds the gunshots, and ignore the first sounds and the cricket bat,” Roux said. He said the evidence of most of the witnesses supported Pistorius’ version, but spent some time attacking the credibility of anesthetist Dr. Johan Stipp, who testified he heard a woman screaming, intermingled with the sound of a man’s voice.

Roux said Stipp’s evidence “was not only unreliable but untruthful. He so desperately wanted to assist the state.”

AFP Photo/Alon Skuy

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What Was Oscar Pistorius Thinking When He Fired The Gun?

What Was Oscar Pistorius Thinking When He Fired The Gun?

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — What was Oscar Pistorius thinking?

For all the minute testimony in the South African athlete’s murder trial — about dents in a door made by a cricket bat, positions of curtains, power cords, and duvets in his bedroom, the forensics of bullet wounds — Pistorius’ fate will largely be decided on how a judge views his state of mind.

Is he a volatile troublemaker who intended to kill his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp? Or was he a victim of extraordinary misfortune firing at a presumed intruder?

Pistorius, the first double amputee to compete in the Olympics, has said he thought a burglar had barricaded himself in a toilet cubicle, and fired four shots through the door, killing Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine’s Day last year.

Judge Thokozile Masipa will hear final arguments Thursday, then resort to a complicated body of law. The simplest verdict would be to agree with the prosecution that Pistorius intentionally shot his girlfriend while in a rage after an argument — making it murder.

But under South African law, firing with intent to kill can be ruled murder even if the defendant was mistaken about his target.

Masipa also could consider “culpable homicide,” a criminal but unintentional killing in which Pistorius, a trained gun expert, did not foresee the consequences of firing Black Talon expanding bullets through a door and into the small cubicle.

A similar defense did not help hip-hop star Molemo “Jub Jub” Maarohanye. A judge in his case ruled that he must have foreseen that drag racing on a crowded street near a school could kill people. Four boys died and two others were left with brain damage when his car struck them. He was convicted of murder.

Pistorius’ advocate, Barry Roux, has aired several different defenses, each mutually exclusive, leaving even legal experts confused — and intrigued.

Although the circumstances of the case preclude a claim of self-defense under South African law, Pistorius could claim “putative private defense” — that he believed he was acting lawfully and reacting reasonably to a perceived threat to his life.

Most experts thought Roux had that defense in mind, until Pistorius took the stand. Many experts regarded Pistorius as a poor witness because of contradictions and inconsistencies under cross-examination. His story didn’t jibe with crime scene photographs showing the position of objects in the bedroom, including a fan and duvet.

Pistorius told the court he was so terrified that he acted unconsciously: He didn’t aim at the door, didn’t consciously pull the trigger, and never thought he would kill anyone. Believing there was a burglar in the home, he armed himself, and moved toward the door — all the time knowing exactly what he was doing. Yet, at the moment he pulled the trigger, intentional, conscious action evaporated, Pistorius testified.

“Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door,” Pistorius told the court.

Roux could use self-defense or several other arguments in framing his final argument on Pistorius’ behalf.

To convict Pistorius, “You need to be convinced that there’s no reasonable possibility that he could have been lingering under the mistake that there was an intruder in the house and that he had to kill this intruder,” said James Grant, a criminal law expert at Witwatersrand University.

Despite the apparent weight of evidence against him, Pistorius’ state of mind is “all important,” said Grant. “That’s why it’s so difficult to call.”

Pistorius’ final defense witness, sports medicine expert Wayne Derman, told the court that extreme anxiety and a diminished ability to defend himself left Pistorius with a hair-trigger startle reflex. His testimony raised a potentially precedent-setting question for South Africa, according to legal analysts: Did being disabled and unable to flee leave Pistorius so vulnerable and terrified that he lost control of his actions, and unintentionally pulled the trigger?

Derman testified that the startle responses of disabled athletes were exaggerated, compared with those of non-disabled people. Because Pistorius couldn’t flee, he had to confront danger, an option that may not have been reasonable for an able-bodied person who could have run away, Derman testified.

Legal analysts said it was the first time a South African court has been confronted with a defense of unconscious, involuntary action, based on an exaggerated startle response due to disability. Courts have tended to dismiss such a defense except in extraordinary cases involving sleep walking or epilepsy.

One more long shot defense is available, however. South African law recognizes temporary insanity (technically known as temporary non-pathological criminal incapacity) in cases in which a killer is so emotionally overwhelmed by terror, rage, or other emotions that he briefly loses control and acts unconsciously and involuntarily.

“The evidence of Derman is very much along the lines that his startle response made it impossible for him to understand that he was doing wrong or to control himself,” Grant said.

The last South African who tried the temporary insanity defense failed. Graeme Eadie, who beat a motorist to death with a hockey stick after the driver tailgated him at night, flashed his headlights, overtook and cut him off, argued that marital, financial, and work stress provoked his temporary non-pathological criminal incapacity. Eadie lost the case, and an appeal.

David Dadic, an attorney and criminal law expert, said the defense made a strong case Pistorius was extremely fearful and vulnerable. But the court might conclude that many other people have been similarly fearful, but did not react the same way, he added.

“I think the court will be wary of the precedent,” Dadic said. “We can’t create a precedent in this country where you can go and shoot down bathroom doors because you are scared.”

AFP Photo/Alon Skuy

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Oscar Pistorius Blames Businessman For Weekend Altercation At Club

Oscar Pistorius Blames Businessman For Weekend Altercation At Club

By Robyn Dixon, Los Angeles Times

JOHANNESBURG — Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was involved in an altercation at an upscale nightclub Saturday and later insisted that a businessman accosted him aggressively, according to South African media.

But the businessman, Jared Mortimer, who runs a clothing company, told the Star newspaper that Pistorius was drunk, poked him in the chest, and insulted his friends and South African President Jacob Zuma.

Mortimer is friendly with several of Pistorius’ former friends.

The incident at the VIP Room in Johannesburg occurred days after Pistorius’ defense lawyers closed their case in Pretoria’s high court, where he is on trial for murder in the shooting death last year of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

The prosecution had portrayed the athlete as a self-centered, aggressive individual with an anger problem, while Pistorius’ defense team presented him as fearful, anxious, vulnerable, and a fervent Christian.

A grainy photograph emerged on Twitter showing a blurred figure that appeared to be Pistorius at the nightclub.

The athlete’s spokeswoman, Anneliese Burgess, confirmed in a statement that there was an incident and said Pistorius wasn’t to blame and that he left the club regretting he had gone there.

The day after the altercation, Pistorius posted several religious tweets and a photo collage of himself working with disabled children. He also posted a quote from Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl that the highest human value is love.

The VIP Room has a private section. Burgess said Pistorius was sitting in a quiet area of the section with his cousin when Mortimer approached.

“The individual in question, according to our client, started to aggressively engage him on matters relating to the trial,” she said. “An argument ensued during which our client asked to be left alone. Oscar left soon thereafter with his cousin.”

But Mortimer told South African media that Pistorius was drunk and behaved aggressively.

He said he was introduced to Pistorius by Guil Yahav, a professional poker player and former bouncer with a conviction assault over the fatal 2002 stabbing of another bouncer, Patrick Caetano.

“Oscar said to me, ‘Oh, you are the notorious Jared Mortimer,”’ Mortimer told the Star. He said Pistorius told him that some of Mortimer’s friends had treated him badly.

“Then he started talking about some of my friends, and he said he had statements and evidence that would get my friends into trouble. But he wouldn’t use it because he wasn’t that kind of person.

“He was drunk, but not bad. We were drinking tequila, and I still remember putting down my drink and thinking I couldn’t drink it while my friends were being spoken of like that,” Mortimer said. The businessman then said that Pistorius upset him by insulting Zuma and his family. Mortimer says he is close to one of the president’s family members.

He claimed that the double-amputee athlete jabbed a finger aggressively in his chest, so Mortimer pushed him, and Pistorius fell backwards over a chair.

“He was poking me and saying that I would never get the better of him. He was close to my face and at that point I pushed him to get him away from me. A chair was behind his legs and he fell to the ground,” Mortimer told the Star.

The newspaper reported that several witnesses also saw the altercation between Mortimer and Pistorius.

“I said to my friend, ‘Check over there, there’s a fight,'” one witness who did not want to be identified told the Star. He said he saw people holding two men apart from each other. The second man then left the club.

“He came up to us and pulled zap signs in our faces,” the man said, referring to an obscene gesture. “That’s when I realized it was Pistorius.”

Burgess said Pistorius “regrets the decision to go into a public place and thereby inviting unwelcome attention.”

AFP Photo/Alon Skuy

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