Interested Bystander
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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 – that is the shots – 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.
I don't think Nel ever accepted that the shots came before the bats but he didn't make a big deal of it. Perhaps he should have. At the end of the HoA Masipa asked him if he agreed with the time line and he quite clearly said only the telephone records. To me that clearly said he did not agree with the order of the bats/shots. He also stated during the trial that he disagreed with Roux about the times of the shots. Nel stated 3.17am for the shots, Roux earlier. Masipa and her assessors must not have comprehended what he meant or chose to ignore his comment.
There seem to be many factual mistakes but unfortunately Nel, at the moment, cannot appeal those. If an appeal is granted and the proposed new law passed I wonder whether he will be allowed to use facts or whether the OP case will fall under retrospective law. If Nel makes an appeal it is likely to be 18 months or more before it is heard unless it is fast-tracked like the trial. I can see this going on for years if Masipa doesn't give OP a stiff CH sentence (in which case Nel might accept this rather than continue fighting for justice). Even so OP will appeal a custodial sentence. I can see it now!