Discussion between the verdict and sentencing

[Interested Bystander]

I wonder that if this bill is passed, it can be applied to this case.

http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/reeva-s-parents-may-still-sue-oscar-1.1753858

That is good news. It was mooted several years back in one of the Discussion Papers. I think it may be Namibia (don't quote me) that has already enshrined it in law. Pity it won't be in time for this case.

 

[04009margaret]

Anyone got a copy of this story?

Here's a small portion from another source

http://thejuice.co.za/top-stories/henke-pistorius-oscar-has-more-fighting-spirit-than-anyone-i-know/

 

[sleuth-d-]

One of the assessors several times interrupted the Judge with whispers, twice leading to a short adjournment : one must wonder what this was about. It’s really unusual, and not explained. "

They left a lot of us scratching our heads.



- The judge took it as fact that the light in the toilet was out. Why were the police and others not asked about this?

Can you imagine how that would have blown OP's story to smithereens? Now that is a tragedy if it was overlooked.


- Oscar fell asleep with lights on, why did he suddenly want total darkness to the extreme extent of wanting to hide the tiny blue LED light?

Yes, I totally agree. In Roux's CA he said OP was bothered about the blue light once he was up?! What the hell, Roux just making that up on the spot I suspect, he probably couldn't get a reasonable answer from OP.


- Did she conclude that Oscar couldn’t have known that firing four highly destructive bullets at someone would not be likely to kill them?

The most incredible comment, this is where I believe J Masipa is out of touch with reality.


- Was it not believable when considering a charge of murder, but obvious when considering Culpable Homicide?

As many have suggested before, J Masipa worked her way backwards. She believed it was CH, and set out to prove that's what it was disregarding evidence that conclude otherwise.


- Why was she quoting evidence of Oscar’s distress, as somehow establishing innocence?

This, personally got my goat the most. She doesn't understand people at all. I'm afraid religion has played a huge part here, and OP played her like a fiddle.


Great post 808, just giving my opinion about those puzzles. Nel tried to put them together, but obviously, J Masipa can't or won't look at the big picture. JMO

just regarding op sleeping with the lights on, and common sense.

his description regarding setting up fans and curtains was aimed at the humid/hot evening; lack of aircon, fans drawing cool air in, not letting bugs in.
his description on waking was also that it was a hot/humid night. nothing about not being able to sleep due to the light levels.

he then proceeds to bring in the fans and close the sliding doors. thus negating his earlier method of drawing in cool air.

what he then does seems designed only to make the room as dark as possible... closing the curtains. covering the led lamp.

the balcony light was still on [op mentioned that the black-out curtains let in outside light along the top even when fully closed]*.

why not switch the balcony light off and leave the fans as they were - drawing cool air in?


*i wonder how much ambient light that would create in the bedroom?

 

[wb180]

If Dr. Stipp, with his military/gun training, could not distinguish between gun and bat sounds - and we know he couldn't because he said he heard 6 or more gunshots, and that's impossible - then Burger, who insisted she knew what a gun sounded like (she was always insisting) - because she had been to a "driving range" once in her life - was probably even more prone to mistaking that sound, her innate musical brilliance* notwithstanding. Now Stipp was quite a bit closer to OP's house than was "golden ears" Burger, so that's a few more flies in the ointment. People who think they heard things clearly are often mistaken.

* proof: she and her husband said so

Man people need to know how evidence works in the case of witness testimonies.

 

[steveml]

I'm thinking if the toilet light worked, Reeva would have turned it on, there is no way imo, an intruder would have turned the light on so that would smash OP's whole 'intruder in the toilet' story. Why would they come through the bathroom window in darkness and hide in the toilet with the light on? Meh, it's a moot point, Interested Bystander says it was confirmed the light didn't work.

Those questions are certainly valid, but only insofar as a retrospective view is concerned. Calculated deductions regarding the how and why an intruder may have entered the premises simply do not happen at the time of an event such as this. I would be gobsmacked if anybody's first thought on suspecting an intruder in a nearby room in their house would be 'I wonder how they manged to get in'. That's something that would be chewed over well after the event. This is a 'real-time' scenario, and the thought processes are entirely different to situations such as burglar break-ins, whereby a person returning home would naturally look to establish the burglar's point of entry.

 

[JuneBug67]

Gunshots first, bat second - why does that PROVE that Oscar did not know that it was Reeva in the toilet room and that he did not know that he was shooting at Reeva??

Could it not have been a scenario where he was enraged, he grabbed the gun, shot it through the door at Reeva? Then he panicked and wanted to see what he had done to her, how bad the damage was? Was she dead or not dead? The issue of her being dead or not was CRUCIAL for him either way. Do you think he would shoot at Reeva, and then not want to see if she was still alive or not, or what had happened to her??

There is also another scenario where he could have intentionally shot her, yet regret that he shot her after he did it. To which it is plausible that he did intentionally shoot her, and yet still yell "help, help" and still be panicked and still want to break the door open to get to her.

I am not understanding your position.

What it does is disprove the state's premeditation case. Because Reeva was shot and killed at the time the first set of sounds were heard it must have been Oscar and not she screaming. What you're left with is a disproven state case and key events and a timeline which fit Oscar's story.

 

[sleuth-d-]

It was tragic to me. Fateful, needless, heartbreaking and tragic. But not murder. A terrible, momentary misperception with sad and tragic precedents in the very country in which they lived.

bbm
tragic absolutely.

i am sorry, and it may have started with a momentary misperception [sliding window at the blue lamp], but further misperceptions then piled up one after the other:

thinking a window opening was an intruder... and not his girlfriend - who he knew was awake, and who had also had just the right amount of time - since they last spoke - to have walked to the bathroom and open said window.
thinking reeva was still in bed
by the bed - thinking a silent reeva had heard him
in the corridor - again believing a non-responsive reeva had heard his shouts to phone police.
at the entrance to the bathroom - believing the toilet door slamming is equivalent to an intruder 'hiding'.
at the door - hearing wood move on a tiled floor and believing the door is opening.
with the shots - shooting four times and thinking the person behind the door would not be killed.

 

[sleuth-d-]

It proves to me that that particular bullet hole came before that particular crack in the wood which was ascribed to a bat strike by experts for both sides. Given the undisputed evidence of two and only two sets of similar, closely grouped sounds I think the reasonable and fair conclusion is that there were a set of bat strikes and a set of gunshots. Even the state's expert said at first that he concluded that the bat strikes (plural) came after the gun shots. Shortly after that he qualified that it was only one strike that proved that and he couldn't say anything conclusive about the other two he examined. But that first phrasing I think indicates how the conclusion that they happened together really does flow pretty naturally from the facts. Do you have Masipa's written judgement? It lays out the accepted timeline pretty well.

bbm
on the one hand earwitness testimony is apparently unreliable.
on the other hand you say the sounds are undisputed, as is their order, and their number, and their close grouping.

can it be both?

 

[JuneBug67]

bbm
tragic absolutely.

i am sorry, and it may have started with a momentary misperception [sliding window at the blue lamp], but further misperceptions then piled up one after the other:

thinking a window opening was an intruder... and not his girlfriend - who he knew was awake, and who had also had just the right amount of time - since they last spoke - to have walked to the bathroom and open said window.
thinking reeva was still in bed
by the bed - thinking a silent reeva had heard him
in the corridor - again believing a non-responsive reeva had heard his shouts to phone police.
at the entrance to the bathroom - believing the toilet door slamming is equivalent to an intruder 'hiding'.
at the door - hearing wood move on a tiled floor and believing the door is opening.
with the shots - shooting four times and thinking the person behind the door would not be killed.

Oscar wasn't sitting behind a keyboard like we are parsing every inch and every moment of his progression. He had a terrible misperception in an instant and then was in a full blown state of fight or flight terror. That part has never been hard for me to understand as a possibility. The biochemical products of fight of flight affect physical, emotional and cognitive processes. Focus narrows and tightens, both visually and mentally. People with adrenaline coursing through their bodies are prone to perceive ambiguous situations as hostile and prone to aggression, particularly if they are emotionally reactive. A single state of mind and body over a couple of minutes, not a highlight reel of Oscar's failures of "common sense".

 

[sleuth-d-]

Those questions are certainly valid, but only insofar as a retrospective view is concerned. Calculated deductions regarding the how and why an intruder may have entered the premises simply do not happen at the time of an event such as this. I would be gobsmacked if anybody's first thought on suspecting an intruder in a nearby room in their house would be 'I wonder how they manged to get in'. That's something that would be chewed over well after the event. This is a 'real-time' scenario, and the thought processes are entirely different to situations such as burglar break-ins, whereby a person returning home would naturally look to establish the burglar's point of entry.

bbm
i would be [and am] gobsmacked that the first thought wasn't to check whether it was the person op was very recently speaking to, who has now gone to the bathroom.

 

[JuneBug67]

bbm
on the one hand earwitness testimony is apparently unreliable.
on the other hand you say the sounds are undisputed, as is their order, and their number, and their close grouping.

can it be both?

Ear witness testimony can be unreliable, not must be unreliable. What evidence can you point to that suggests there were not two sets of bangs that sounded to observers like gunshots coming close together? It was undisputed by both sides at the trial.

 

[jay-jay]

bbm
on the one hand earwitness testimony is apparently unreliable.
on the other hand you say the sounds are undisputed, as is their order, and their number, and their close grouping.

can it be both?

In a 'Pick & Mix' verdict, yes of course it can! :-/

 

[JuneBug67]

In a 'Pick & Mix' verdict, yes of course it can! :-/

It's fairly obvious that "I heard bangs that sounded like gunshots" has a different vulnerability to error than "I heard high pitched screaming. It was a woman terrified for her life."

 

[sleuth-d-]

Ear witness testimony can be unreliable, not must be unreliable. What evidence can you point to that suggests there were not two sets of bangs that sounded to observers like gunshots coming close together? It was undisputed by both sides at the trial.

none - most of the evidence has been disregarded by the judge. i expect you will say rightly so. i am trying to work out why the judge chose to cast doubt over the earwitnesses recollections. but was also prepared to be specific about the bat sounds/gun sounds. with statements like "Approximately between 03:12 and 03:14 first sounds were heard. These were shots."

i am hearing her job is not to be a detective... has she deduced this? is it proven by phone records? is it proven by screaming/lack of screaming? is it proven by witnesses hearing bangs?

 

[808]

What it does is disprove the state's premeditation case. Because Reeva was shot and killed at the time the first set of sounds were heard it must have been Oscar and not she screaming. What you're left with is a disproven state case and key events and a timeline which fit Oscar's story.

Which version would that be? The bail application / the adjusted tailored version or the simple lie?

The state did not have to prove intent in this prima facie murder case ..it simply had to turn up and say "give us a convincing narrative Oscar".

The details and minutiae are trite ..he plainly executed someone for his own fear (by his version).

The judge has taken licence to redraw the law as she sees it appropriate to OP for whatever reason. It will be debated and challenged.

Agreeing with this judgement is just plainly wrong even if OP's convoluted story is 1/2 true. His sentence should be appropriate to the crime for the sake of society in Africa.

JBug he did the crime and should be convicted of boring old murder not ooopsy mistaken execution. :moo::moo:

 

[jay-jay]

Those questions are certainly valid, but only insofar as a retrospective view is concerned. Calculated deductions regarding the how and why an intruder may have entered the premises simply do not happen at the time of an event such as this. I would be gobsmacked if anybody's first thought on suspecting an intruder in a nearby room in their house would be 'I wonder how they manged to get in'. That's something that would be chewed over well after the event. This is a 'real-time' scenario, and the thought processes are entirely different to situations such as burglar break-ins, whereby a person returning home would naturally look to establish the burglar's point of entry.

Of course they wouldn't just stand there and wonder about that, that's not how the mind works .. the mind works like a web, and in a fraction of a second, too .. weighing up all the possibilities and quickly discounting things which aren't very likely (i.e. it would calculate, within a blink of an eye, as to whether an intruder really had entered your bathroom without you first not having heard any other relevant noises and would decided 'no, an intruder hasn't entered the bathrooom, because that would just be ridiculous without anything other sounds to substantiate it'. <<-- all of that really would happen in a thousandth of a second. The other thing that would happen in a thousandth of a second, in the brain's web-like way of being able to think, is you would also be wondering if it could be your partner who you already know to be awake and your brain would immediately come to the conclusion it was more than likely going to be them, and that if you were at all unsure about all of those things your brain ran through in that split second, then you would go and check, but make ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN that it was not your partner you were about to blitz to death!

I'm not really sure people understand how fast the brain works, to be honest .. also with regard to the speed with which manipulators can lie. This really isn't getting home, and I don't understand why. People do not 'think' during the course of various actions throughout the day, in the same way as people 'think' when they are, for instance, typing on a messageboard. When you are driving, say, your brain is observing thousands of things per second, and making thousands of decisions per second. Your brain works much, much faster than any known computer, and you know how fast those work these days .. we are talking fractions of seconds here, calculating a whole raft of information .. and the information being calculated by his brain, in that instant, should've told him that there was no intruder .. basically because there wasn't, and from all that we know, there was no earthly reason why his brain would've calculated that there was.

It never happened ..

 

[jay-jay]

By the way, I think that makes his story all the more unbelievable for him to have said that Reeva was awake .. because if she was awake, then he had even more reason to think it was her in the toilet. How STUPID could anyone be as to know that their OH is up and awake, and then upon hearing a noise in the toilet, when it is just SO likely to be your OH, to go marching down the corridor with a gun, then blast them to bits.

No, no-one is that stupid, not even Oscar.


It never happened.

 

[delilah]

I'm just reading Masipa's verdict and I'm starting to feel like a right plonker. It's now become completely clear to me why she accepted OP's version:

"During the course of the trial it became clear that some of the sounds that witnesses interpreted as gunshots were actually not gunshots, butsounds of a cricket bat striking against the toilet door. It was also notcontradicted that the shots were fired first and that the striking of the door, using a cricket bat, followed thereafter. " (When exactly did the state concede that? Please show me).

If you accept that that is the case, you are almost certainly going to come to the conclusion that OP's version (well, one of them) is correct. You can dismiss all the "it was a woman screaming" evidence, because the medical evidence indicates RS could not have screamed repeatedly (only possibly immediately and briefly after the hip shot, although Masipa dismisses that too). You can conclude the ear witnesses were plain wrong ("Significantly Ms Burger refused to concede that she could have missed hearing the first sounds &#8211; that is the shots &#8211; as she might have been asleep at the time and that what she heard was a cricket bat striking against the toilet door. "

You can disregard Stipp's intermingling of male and female voices because you know that can't be true, because you know it was shots-screams-bat. You can also gloss over the bits of evidence that don't quite fit (Mangena's duff....duff duff duff now becomes Masipa's "the shots were fired in quick succession" - which rules out the possibility of RS screaming completely). You don't really need to consider the State's case that the forensic evidence showed only one of the bat hits was definitely made after the shots and that it could not be proven whether the others happened before or after.

So the inability of the State to give even a hypothesis as to what the first set of noises was (bat on bath panel? air gun (remember the hole in the bedroom door?), bat on toilet door????) and her assertion that the State agreed the shots came before the bat hits, made it a foregone conclusion for Masipa that it was shots-screams-bat.

Once you conclude that, you can also dismiss those DV warning lights "I'm scared of you sometimes" because, if the shots came before the bat noises, OP just made an honest mistake and fired four shots at a burglar, although not anticipating that anyone might get killed, of course.

 

[atthelake]

Unfortunately, a good synopsis of the way she did her logic

 

[jay-jay]

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the assertion of the door being hit by the cricket bat exactly the same number of times as the number of shots, extremely odd?

Burger heard a .. duff .. duff, duff, duff .. and that was supposedly (according to Masipa) the cricket bat? How odd that it matches up exactly with Mangena's excellent ballistics report regarding the shooting itself. Funny that, isn't it.