Tag: self defense
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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‘Stand Your Ground’ Protesters Call Florida ‘Stuck On Stupid’

‘Stand Your Ground’ Protesters Call Florida ‘Stuck On Stupid’

By Aaron Deslatte, Orlando Sentinel

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The parents of Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis led a crowd of protesters to the Capitol Monday to warn Republican policymakers that failing to repeal Florida’s ‘stand your ground’ law will haunt them at the polls this fall.

Florida’s “shoot-first” law passed in 2005 has been blamed for a rash of high-profile shootings in recent years. The law allows people who are not involved in criminal activity to stand their ground and meet force with force if they feel threatened.

Last summer, George Zimmerman was acquitted in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford. Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer who got into a physical altercation with Martin, who was not armed.

This year, the law was in the middle of a legal showdown in Jacksonville after Michael Dunn was found guilty of second-degree attempted murder for shooting into a car full of teenagers and killing 17-year old Jordan Davis.

“Florida is an ‘F’ state. Right now, Florida is failing us,” Sybrina Fulton, Martin’s mother, told a crowd of hundreds of demonstrators, led by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who marched the streets to the Capitol.

Sharpton called Florida “ground zero” for the gun-friendly self-defense laws that have spread to two dozen other states, making it appropriate that Florida should be where they press to reform or repeal the law.

“You have legislators saying our children can be killed based on the imaginations of others,” he said. “Protecting yourself is not having a social hallucination.”

The parents are later planning to testify before a committee, although the GOP-dominated Legislature has shown no willingness to make major changes to the law.

Last November, a House committee defeated a bill that would have repealed the law. And another measure sponsored by Sens. David Simmons, R-Altamonte Springs, and Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, which makes minor changes to the law faces stiff opposition in the House.

“We will fight to change their minds. We will fight to change their hearts,” Smith said.

A spokesman for House Speaker Will Weatherford, R-Wesley Chapel, said the chamber had no plans to re-consider the repeal.

Although the law itself is unlikely to change this spring, the issue could resonate to help Democrats deliver their voters to the polls this fall. Gov. Rick Scott was singled out by several speakers over his steadfast support for the law and is facing an uphill climb to keep his job against likely Democratic opponent Charlie Crist.

Tracy Martin, Trayvon Martin’s father, said if the law isn’t changed “we’ve got to make a change in that office.”

Asked for comment, a spokesman for the governor responded with a one-sentence email: “Governor Scott supports the 2nd Amendment and Florida’s self defense laws.”

U.S. Rep. Corrine Brown, a Jacksonville Democrat, said the state had embarrassed itself with the law. “We’re here because Florida is stuck on stupid.”

Photo: LaDawna’s pics via Flickr

The Person You’re Most Likely To Kill With Your Gun Is You

The Person You’re Most Likely To Kill With Your Gun Is You

In 1979, there were nearly two automobile fatalities for each gun death. According to a study by Bloomberg, by 2015 firearm fatalities will surpass motor vehicle accidents as a cause of death.

The massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School has ignited a debate about gun safety, which is typical after a mass shooting. However, President Obama, in a speech to the residents of Newtown, CT, vowed to do more to stop gun violence. If this is true, he’ll have to take a look at the leading cause of gun deaths — suicide.

Eighty-five Americans are shot dead every day. Of those 53 — or 62 percent — are suicides.

Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in America. You’re more likely to die in an accident and much more likely to die in a hospital suffering from heart disease or cancer. But if you’re going to die by a firearm, it will probably be the result of suicide.

There are 51,438 licensed retail gun stores in America, more than three times the number of McDonald’s restaurants.

Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Policy, told Bloomberg that it’s unclear if gun ownership is linked to violence. But there seems to be a clear link to gun availability, and familiarity with guns and suicide.

Harvard University study conducted in 2007 found that “States with higher levels of household gun ownership had higher rates of firearm suicide and overall suicide.”

Adolescents who commit suicide by firearm generally use the family gun. Veterans have continually demonstrated high rates of suicide by firearm. Suicide by firearm is, of course, much more effective than other methods.

Gun deaths have been slowly rising since 2000, while deaths related to motor vehicles have plummeted since 2007.

Those who oppose further regulation of guns make the argument that guns are necessary for self-defense.

The 2011 study “Guns in the home provide greater health risk than benefit” showed that a gun is more likely to send a family member to the emergency room or the morgue than to ever be used against an intruder.

As the nation considers what can be done about gun violence, the issue of how to protect gun owners from themselves definitely needs to be considered.

 Photo: Reuben Yau via Flickr