Discussion Thread #61 ~ the appeal~

[mrjitty]

I too think he may have the sequence wrong. Check out my comment in cell E17 of WTA2 and let me know what you think.

Yes it seems internally inconsistent - good catch

This is where Masipa is baffling.

The fact that they both heard a man and a woman is surely more critical, and more reliable, than the exact sequence

 

[Trotterly]

Yes. But if you bothered to pay attention to the trial you'd know why he was using that time.

It was the time Mrs Stipp said she looked at her FAST CLOCK and heard the final bangs. Nel did not literally mean the bangs occurred at 3.17am. Why would he? Mrs Stipp was the only person anywhere in the trial who mentioned 3.17 and Nel knows that the clock was 2-4 minutes fast.

If it was 2/3 minutes fast this fits exactly with bangs just before Dr Stipp called security.

Think about this please. If the actual final bangs happened at 3.17, why were Dr & Mrs Stipp standing on their balcony completely oblivious to them? After he spoke to security, Dr Stipp went outside and waited for security. We know this because security spoke to him there.

It's not that hard to figure out.

I also draw your attention to 3299 of the judgement:

03.17 Dr Stipp arrempted to make a call to 10111
03.17 Second sounds were heard

 

[LemonMousse]

There is a different possibility

For instance Masipa is happy to adjust Stipp's sequencing so that the cricket bats come AFTER his call to security. She effectively does the same with Mike N & Mrs N even though neither hears any bangs after 3.16

Can it simply be that Johnson is the one who had the sequence wrong?

So in other words the shots came before his call at 3.16?

Afterall - he wrote this all down later - whereas Dr Stipp was a witness at the crime scene.

That's exactly what I think happened.

First bangs, who knows. I suspect Mrs Stipp misread her clock while she was waking up. But only the Stipps (because of their position) heard them. This was OP smacking around with the bat in the bathroom, causing Reeva to start screaming...at which point the Johnson/Burgers woke up.

3.14 - shots, Reeva is killed
3.15 - Stipps speaks to security
3.15/16 - Johnson tries to call security
3.16 - Mr Mike calls security

Everyone then hears OP wailing and calling for help.

Must have happened like that. Hugely unfortunate that Johnson made a note of the time wrong and Stipp accidentally misdialled at 3.27. Without these, very common, mistakes Pistorius would have been convicted of murder.

 

[LemonMousse]

I also draw your attention to 3299 of the judgement:

03.17 Dr Stipp arrempted to make a call to 10111
03.17 Second sounds were heard

Draw my attention to whatever you like...the judgement is wrong and so are you.

As I have told you before, no record was presented to show when the 10111 call was made. The only phone records were the security landline, OPs and security mobiles. These would obviously not show a call made to a totally different, unrelated number! Stipps phone records were not admitted, and neither were records from 10111...so who came up with that time?

Roux made it up and you've fallen for it.

 

[Interested Bystander]

Can anyone tell me whether the Stipps, Burger, Johnson and VdM will be allowed to publicly comment on the fact that the judge rubbished their testimony.

 

[ApplesInMyBra]

As it wasn't the ambulance, nor security as they were already present, I would suggest it was to his wife, who then also turned up and, according to Stipp, made her classic remark about hoping it didn't get out to the papers.

Nice to see you, Mr Fossil! :happydance:

 

[Trotterly]

Draw my attention to whatever you like...the judgement is wrong and so are you.

As I have told you before, no record was presented to show when the 10111 call was made. The only phone records were the security landline, OPs and security mobiles. These would obviously not show a call made to a totally different, unrelated number! Stipps phone records were not admitted, and neither were records from 10111...so who came up with that time?

Roux made it up and you've fallen for it.

Nel must have "fallen for it" as well then because there is no effective response to it on record.

Seriously you think "senior respected counsel" to use Nel's words, would "make it up"?

 

[kittychi]

I think if they are his jeans, it directly opens the implication he was dressed. Because they were on the floor over the duvet.

Something that is very interesting with X, is to go behind the narrative and examine the agenda of the prosecutor and accused

The jeans are particularly sensitive to OP. He invents an absurd story in relation to them

But why is this? After all, they are just a pair of jeans that Reeva could have been taken off in the early evening

In some respects the sensitivity of the point is more important than how they got there.

BBM: I wonder why it has never been made clear exactly whose jeans those were? It would have been easy to verify if they were his or hers. Since they were on top of the duvet, it seems to be an important point just who they belonged to!

 

[LemonMousse]

Nel must have "fallen for it" as well then because there is no effective response to it on record.

Seriously you think "senior respected counsel" to use Nel's words, would "make it up"?

Yes, I do think Roux would make it up.

He manipulated the timeline and then asserted that xyz must have happened at such and such a time without relying on actual evidence.

You are missing/ignoring the point and that is that there was no phone record that demonstrated a 3.17 call to 10111.

If you think there is, then find the reference to it in the trial, please.

But before you do, perhaps you'd like to have a go at answering the question Dr Stipp himself asked on the stand....why would he be trying to call 10111 after he'd spoken to security? He only tried 10111 (and the other number) because he hadn't been able to reach security in the first place.

It went....

Tried security. Couldn't get through (engaged or unanswered)
Tried two more numbers, one of which was 10111, without success
Heard bangs while attempting these calls, called his wife back inside..she looked at the fast clock and it read 3.17
He tried security again, got through, spoke to them and then went back out on to the balcony to wait for them, heard a man yelling help

Roux is clever, but his timeline was an utter crock. I don't blame him for doing it - it's his job, but his timeline is still nonsensical and doesn't even manage to support Pistorius's own story.

 

[Deleted member 102539]

I think if they are his jeans, it directly opens the implication he was dressed. Because they were on the floor over the duvet.

Something that is very interesting with X, is to go behind the narrative and examine the agenda of the prosecutor and accused

The jeans are particularly sensitive to OP. He invents an absurd story in relation to them

But why is this? After all, they are just a pair of jeans that Reeva could have been taken off in the early evening

In some respects the sensitivity of the point is more important than how they got there.

IF the jeans belonged to OP, then when exactly had he pulled them? Until this second he must have been wearing his prostetics and wasn't on his stumps. No wonder, that there is great sensitivity to this point.

 

[mrjitty]

Roux is clever, but his timeline was an utter crock. I don't blame him for doing it - it's his job, but his timeline is still nonsensical and doesn't even manage to support Pistorius's own story.

This is why I am more interested in a statistical approach as opposed to Masipa's flawed logic.

Roux's timeline requires bending key parts of the evidence - for example changing what time it was on Stipp's clock by 10 mins.

Similarly reconciling Mr Fossils timeline also requires changing Johnson's evidence.

Nel was correct not to produce a timeline. Rather he called for reason.

i.e. the timeline cannot be reconciled exactly and only OP knows what really happened. The state cannot be expected to produce an exact timeline. And anyway it is not critical.

Rather Nel pointed out that overall, the witnesses did a great job of describing what happened - but necessarily there must be mistakes and we can't know exactly what the mistakes are.

Rather than trying to determine the exact marks in the sand - I believe we should examine the entire net.

What are the common, corroborated elements in the story?

Which things are more likely?

Mr Fossils spreadsheet (far more sophisticated than Masipa's approach) allows one to examine the various pieces and consider how they fit in the overall picture.

So for example, once you realise that the 4 nearest witnesses - Dr & Mrs Stipp & Mr & Mrs N - report no shots after 3:15:51, this is necessarily a devastating combination of data points. Furthermore none of these 4 witnesses hears Reeva after 3:15:51.

From this highly reliable centre point, once can work outwards in terms of what is more likely than not.

Nel realises Johnson cannot be exactly reconciled with this. Yet Johnson & his wife hear broadly the same things

Just because Johnson hears 5-6 shots - we don't say - oh well in that case all of Johnson's evidence is wrong - we realise that he has mistakes.

And if Johnson can hear the wrong number of shots, he can also be mistaken about sequence many months later. We can never know exactly.

However given that 2 other witnesses heard a woman screaming, and a woman was shot dead at that exact time - it is really likely that Johnson:

Really heard a man
Really heard one person not two people over many minutes
Really heard cricket bats not guns?

Or is the more likely inference that Johnson has a less vivid, supporting detail incorrect?

Then once can conduct the same analysis multiple times.

Given Mr & Mrs N hear no shots after 3:15:51, is it really likely Mr & Mrs Stipp miss the cricket bats at 3:17?

Given 4 people heard a woman and 2 people, it is likely what they actually heard was OP (a point not in evidence)

Given a woman was shot dead, is it likely she never screamed when 4 people said they heard her?

Given the immediate neighbours heard OP crying for help after 3:15:51 for some minutes - is it likely that they failed to notice him smashing down his toilet door with a cricket bat @ 3:17?

Given Mrs N was awoken by gunshots, it is likely she would then not notice cricket bats sounding like gunshots when awake only 2 minutes later?

Given Mrs Stipp heard a commotion and it said 3.02am on her clock - is it likely that what she actually heard was moments before 3:15:51?

Could Ms Burger, a talented musician, hear the “bangs” in the tempo matching the ballistics, yet actually this was the cricket bat?


it is the overall power of all of these inferences combined that is critical - not each of them individually.

 

[mrjitty]

Yes, I do think Roux would make it up.

He manipulated the timeline and then asserted that xyz must have happened at such and such a time without relying on actual evidence.

I must say - I think this was a case where a low end first instance judge was simply too in awe of counsel.

In NZ (or England), any High Court Judge would have a career to match Roux. You don't get to the High Court unless you had a career like Roux/Nel!

Masipa is nowhere near Roux's level.

So she let him get away with putting contentions to witnesses which he never placed in evidence.

To be fair to Roux, I wonder if he was planning on calling some scream evidence, but ultimately thought it too risky?

The evidence he did call - namely that a man can sound like a woman - was clearly in the realm of speculation.

This has been compared to the OJ glove thing - but he at least tried the glove on.

I think it should never have been allowed to contend that OP screams like a woman without introducing any evidence.

In a jury trial I think this would not have been permitted.

 

[JudgeJudi]

Why would the jeans on the bedroom floor be Oscar's?

Here is my theory.

I believe there was an argument and have stated numerous times that I always believed he had his prosthetics on. I find it hard to imagine, with his personality, that he’d be having a torrid argument with a woman standing many inches taller than him. A woman who was and did speak up for herself. JMO

Oscar claims he was in bed asleep and was wearing the shorts he was photographed in.

Let's say he was awake and wearing those jeans, which means he was wearing his prosthetics.
They argued for at least an hour and at some point he goes on the attack.
He shoots Reeva. The intruder story is already forming in his mind.
He runs to the bedroom and rings Stander and Netcare and then runs downstairs to open the front door.
He then runs upstairs and hurriedly pulls off his jeans, tosses them on the floor and puts on the shorts.
He returns to the toilet, removes Reeva and carries her downstairs.

The change into shorts is to support his version that he was in bed asleep. This would be totally implausible if he was wearing his jeans and prosthetics.

If this theory is correct, it disproves much of his version.

SOMEONE WILL KNOW whose jeans they were even though we don't.

 

[cottonweaver]

i like toying with the new idea re. the inside out jeans in the bedroom being his.

But I cannot get my head around why they are inside out.

I can only think of 2 reasons why jeans are turned inside out and they don't apply to OP wearing them. For me, that means he would have had to go to the trouble of reversing them AFTER taking them off.

Like you JJudi, I DO think the intruder theory came to him very very quickly and that is plausible because its an event he had considered/discussed ( "in jest") before, but I can't see him reversing those jeans on purpose and then dropping them where they were found.

Afraid I have to go out now but would be interested to see where this one goes.

 

[JudgeJudi]

i like toying with the new idea re. the inside out jeans in the bedroom being his.

But I cannot get my head around why they are inside out.

I can only think of 2 reasons why jeans are turned inside out and they don't apply to OP wearing them. For me, that means he would have had to go to the trouble of reversing them AFTER taking them off.

Like you JJudi, I DO think the intruder theory came to him very very quickly and that is plausible because its an event he had considered/discussed ( "in jest") before, but I can't see him reversing those jeans on purpose and then dropping them where they were found.

Afraid I have to go out now but would be interested to see where this one goes.

It is just a theory. I think it's interesting that they're inside out too, but he obviously removed them at some point and even if he removed them and Reeva wasn't there, this still wouldn't provide an explanation. Is it feasible that he removed them with his prosthetics on and in so doing they came off inside out but this was easier or faster?

 

[lithgow1]

i like toying with the new idea re. the inside out jeans in the bedroom being his.

But I cannot get my head around why they are inside out.

I can only think of 2 reasons why jeans are turned inside out and they don't apply to OP wearing them. For me, that means he would have had to go to the trouble of reversing them AFTER taking them off.

Like you JJudi, I DO think the intruder theory came to him very very quickly and that is plausible because its an event he had considered/discussed ( "in jest") before, but I can't see him reversing those jeans on purpose and then dropping them where they were found.

Afraid I have to go out now but would be interested to see where this one goes.

Sometimes jeans or pants end up inside out because of the way you have taken them off, in the same way a jumper or t-shirt can do the same, especially if you do it in a sloppy or fast manner.

 

[mrjitty]

More interesting stuff from the bail affidavit

Reeva was slumped over but alive.

I battled to get her out of the toilet and pulled her into the bathroom.

So much tailoring!?

 

[mrjitty]

i like toying with the new idea re. the inside out jeans in the bedroom being his.

But I cannot get my head around why they are inside out.

I can only think of 2 reasons why jeans are turned inside out and they don't apply to OP wearing them. For me, that means he would have had to go to the trouble of reversing them AFTER taking them off.

Like you JJudi, I DO think the intruder theory came to him very very quickly and that is plausible because its an event he had considered/discussed ( "in jest") before, but I can't see him reversing those jeans on purpose and then dropping them where they were found.

Afraid I have to go out now but would be interested to see where this one goes.

This is what I am interested in.

And it explains how they ended up on top of the duvet - which is obviously impossible if they are Reeva's jeans in OPs version

Especially if you accept that the blue light+jeans never happened - then how did Reeva's jeans get in this location?

The other possibility is a rape scene.

 

[Mr Fossil]

Why would OP say the jeans are Reeva's? Possibly because if he says they are his then he is definitely going to have to explain how Reeva's jeans, the only other pair of jeans 'in circulation', are on the ground outside the bathroom window.

I don't have a problem with them being inside out, particularly if he took them off in a hurry and, as Judi suggests, perhaps wearing prostheses makes this more likely? Recall that in his EIC OP says "I lay on my bed and took off my suit" so perhaps it isn't easy for him to take trouser off.

When Roux re-examines and shows him Photo 68 (of the jeans right-side out) OP says "One can see where
the belt leads across the top of the jeans, at the top right" but I don't see a belt (nor in Photo 67, the jeans inside out).



Playing a complete outsider: did OP wear the same jeans that day? He says he was in a suit but here is a pic of him that afternoon at the Firzt party (where he attended as a speaker, but seems to forget this in his EIC).



[modsnip]

Here is a blow-up of the 'trousers' he wore that afternoon:

 

[LemonMousse]

This is why I am more interested in a statistical approach as opposed to Masipa's flawed logic.

Roux's timeline requires bending key parts of the evidence - for example changing what time it was on Stipp's clock by 10 mins.

Similarly reconciling Mr Fossils timeline also requires changing Johnson's evidence.

Nel was correct not to produce a timeline. Rather he called for reason.

i.e. the timeline cannot be reconciled exactly and only OP knows what really happened. The state cannot be expected to produce an exact timeline. And anyway it is not critical.

Rather Nel pointed out that overall, the witnesses did a great job of describing what happened - but necessarily there must be mistakes and we can't know exactly what the mistakes are.

Rather than trying to determine the exact marks in the sand - I believe we should examine the entire net.

What are the common, corroborated elements in the story?

Which things are more likely?

Mr Fossils spreadsheet (far more sophisticated than Masipa's approach) allows one to examine the various pieces and consider how they fit in the overall picture.

So for example, once you realise that the 4 nearest witnesses - Dr & Mrs Stipp & Mr & Mrs N - report no shots after 3:15:51, this is necessarily a devastating combination of data points. Furthermore none of these 4 witnesses hears Reeva after 3:15:51.

From this highly reliable centre point, once can work outwards in terms of what is more likely than not.

Nel realises Johnson cannot be exactly reconciled with this. Yet Johnson & his wife hear broadly the same things

Just because Johnson hears 5-6 shots - we don't say - oh well in that case all of Johnson's evidence is wrong - we realise that he has mistakes.

And if Johnson can hear the wrong number of shots, he can also be mistaken about sequence many months later. We can never know exactly.

However given that 2 other witnesses heard a woman screaming, and a woman was shot dead at that exact time - it is really likely that Johnson:

Really heard a man
Really heard one person not two people over many minutes
Really heard cricket bats not guns?

Or is the more likely inference that Johnson has a less vivid, supporting detail incorrect?

Then once can conduct the same analysis multiple times.

Given Mr & Mrs N hear no shots after 3:15:51, is it really likely Mr & Mrs Stipp miss the cricket bats at 3:17?

Given 4 people heard a woman and 2 people, it is likely what they actually heard was OP (a point not in evidence)

Given a woman was shot dead, is it likely she never screamed when 4 people said they heard her?

Given the immediate neighbours heard OP crying for help after 3:15:51 for some minutes - is it likely that they failed to notice him smashing down his toilet door with a cricket bat @ 3:17?

Given Mrs N was awoken by gunshots, it is likely she would then not notice cricket bats sounding like gunshots when awake only 2 minutes later?

Given Mrs Stipp heard a commotion and it said 3.02am on her clock - is it likely that what she actually heard was moments before 3:15:51?

Could Ms Burger, a talented musician, hear the “bangs” in the tempo matching the ballistics, yet actually this was the cricket bat?


it is the overall power of all of these inferences combined that is critical - not each of them individually.

Spot on, MrJitty, spot on.