Judge's Order re: OP's Mental Health Eval Thread #42

[Trooper]

BBM - Yes. Roux let us all down with his empty promise of providing evidence that OP screamed like a woman! Did that go down the toilet with his 'proof' that the head shot came first?? Double tap theory in the toilet too? Doesn't really matter since that's where most of OP's testimony is, so they can all keep each other company.

call me a hopeless optimistic.. but I still hope that the screaming test Roux gave assurances to Judge Masipa , during his x-examination of Dr Stipp will happen.. .. if not, the process of the court is that along with Kenny Oldwages note against him by the judge, in reference to a dog barking that Kenny threatened a witness with , and now must produce, so must Roux produce to avoid the Judges note in the court record..

 

[Trooper]

of course, Roux may decide that a judges note against him in the court record is preferable to the sight and sound of Oscar doing the test.. I don't know. .

 

[Giles]

a question i would like to ask Mr Roux is this

So in court you asked Mrs Motshuane to do an impression of the man she heard crying
You asked Mrs Nhlengethwa to do an impression of the man she heard crying
So why is it that you didn't ask MR Nhlengethwa to do an impression of the man he heard crying?.

Hmmmmm Funny that isnt it?.

Several people have made this comment. It is not entirely true. Roux did get Mr Nhlengethwa to replicate the crying he heard, it just wasn't quite as dramatic (or memorable) as the two women's.

 

[IfIMay]

Several people have made this comment. It is not entirely true. Roux did get Mr Nhlengethwa to replicate the crying he heard, it just wasn't quite as dramatic (or memorable) as the two women's.

could you link it for us? or tell us when? I don't remember it at all. TIA!

 

[Trooper]

in Mr Nhlengethwa's testimony he didn't replicate the crying that went on for some time, according to Oscar or the screaming in a womans voice.. which, according to Oscar he did, what he testified to was a mans voice saying noooo please nooo..

he then proceeded to imitate the words and attempted to evoke the ambience of it.

 

[Trooper]

which.. needless to say, Mr Nhlengethwa used his own voice, his male timbre, as he heard the voice. He didn't use a womans voice, or a replica of it. Which it would be , wouldn't it, since Mr Nhlengethwa is not of that gender.

 

[BritsKate]

For me, any disease, disorder or defect rising to the level of mitigating or negating criminal responsibility is incongruent with it not affecting Oscar's everyday life. He was able to schedule home repairs, have strangers to his home, entertain media appearances, travel globally, and train/compete normally...

But that night, and only that night apparently, his 'disorder' was so acute it impinged on his differentiation between right and wrong?

Alrighty then.

Please pardon errors as posted via Tapatalk with a less than stellar user.

 

[Giles]

could you link it for us? or tell us when? I don't remember it at all. TIA!

Sorry, I can't seem to get videos to load presently.

Trooper has highlighted more details in her posts above.

 

[Estelle]

http://mg.co.za/article/2014-05-22-t...-made-me-do-it

"Mental illness does not necessarily abolish the capacity to form meaningful and competent intentions" say scholars. How accountable can one be?

Oscar Pistorius, on trial for Reeva Steenkamp’s murder, will be tested by psychiatrists for general anxiety disorder. (Reuters)

Most of us have woken at night to an unfamiliar, scary sound. The grogginess of sleep does little to dampen the surge in adrenaline. In a moment, the heart is pounding at a rate that is frightening in itself. This is the “fight or flight” response: we enter a state of hypervigilance.

This is the result of millions of years of evolution. The better our fight or flight system, the more likely we are to escape from or overcome an adversary. There is a variation in the threshold at which we begin to experience that sense of threat, and certain life events can also make us more sensitive to it.

However, now that Oscar Pistorius has been ordered to undergo psychiatric tests, what will be the outcome?

Was the anxiety he experienced on the night he killed RS related to an existing problem such as a general anxiety disorder? If it was, then it is possible he could be absolved of any criminal responsibility for her death.

In human history, differences in the way we think, feel and behave were thought of as personality traits. When these were extreme, the person was labelled mad but the fearful person – like the shy, disobedient or easily distracted person – would not have been considered ill.

However, today, many of these types have been redefined as medical conditions. This tendency is controversial, but can be the way by which those whose thoughts or feelings make them distressed, or a danger to themselves or others, get help. What is increasingly clear is that it has seismic implications for the law.

The principle that an altered state of mind can excuse a crime is built into many legal systems. The cause could be drink, a brain tumour that distorts judgment, or an episode of mental illness. But, as the empire of psychiatric diagnoses expands, taking in ever finer variations in personality, this will become much more difficult to navigate.

This argument isn’t new: lawyers have long argued over what constitutes an impairment of reason. What is changing is the ability of scientists to identify tiny differences in the brains and bodies of subjects – and to link those to behaviour.

A Western cultural bias to “hard” data means that the biological carries more weight than the biographical with judges, although the two are inextricably linked. If a brain tumour can be used as a defence, then why not poor functioning in the prefrontal cortex, or reduced blood flow in the angular gyrus?

Judgment is certainly altered by anxiety. The levels of important neuro-transmitters may change and, over time, the mass of certain structures in the brain too. We cannot know what an “un-anxious” Pistorius would have done that night. The question is absurd, though, because the real Pistorius is anxious.

Should that person not be held to account for any crime he may have committed?

With our ability to scrutinise the brain improving all the time, it will become more difficult to maintain the fiction that the mind and body operate separately. Yet, as the line between disease and personality blurs, traditional ideas of blame and responsibility could fall apart.
Should we then abandon blame?

Clinicians know mental illness does not necessarily abolish the capacity to form meaningful and competent intentions. But surely moral accountability is essential and we are still clearly capable of making some decisions.

But, until we are ready to give up the idea that a mind that can choose, even in its darkest moments, blame will have to be part of the story.

What do you think?

 

[PrimeSuspect]

There was a poster here, someone will recall her name, I am sure, who was a psychiatric registered nurse.

She provided a lot of links that expanded the Flight or Fight proposal. The gist of it was, that there is not just Flight or Fight. There are four states of mind ..

Flight,

Fight

Freeze

Fawn..

Thank you, I looked into this and found most healthy minded people have access to the 4 Fs, and will choose which is the best for whatever situation they encounter. In the damaged/traumatized individual who suffers from PTSD, they will rely heavily on only one or two of the F responses.

IMO, OP did not suffer PTSD at the time he shot and killed Reeva. Imo, Dr Vorster made compensations that OP's default 'fight or flight' response, is 'fight', so I assume he told Dr V in their session what he said on the stand, 'he is the kind of person to 'fight' rather than flee'.

IMO, the DT with the help of Dr V want us to believe OP was so filled with fear and anxiety, he literally went mad and believed an intruder would break in and lock themselves in his toilet. Well, imo he did go mad that night, mad with rage at Reeva for whatever reason, jealousy and fear of her leaving, jmo. :scared:

Nel asked if there was not an inconsistency between someone being excessively concerned with security, and the same person not fixing a broken window downstairs for a long period; not having checked if his external alarm beams were working; and allowing ladders to be placed against the exterior of his building? Vorster allowed that one would expect a hyper-anxious person to have resolved these matters.

Vorster testified that Pistorius had told her that he fired shots at the noise from the bathroom, because he was scared. Nel pointed out that Pistorius had denied that he fired at the noise.

“It would appear there are inconsistencies,” said Vorster, after a pause. She then said that it was likely that Pistorius would not be able to remember events accurately.

“Or he could be lying,” Nel offered.

“He could just be lying too. It's another explanation,” conceded Vorster.

http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2014-05-13-pistorius-trial-week-8-day-2/#.U39xMtKSyfU

 

[Trooper]

Oscar looked unfazed in that little video clip Roux suddenly dropped into the court, the one of Reeva and Oscar happily shopping in a service station, caught on CCTV.. how scary is a service station?? people have real fears of them, I am one , I never go in side, I use my card at the pump, you never know who will leap out from behind you, brandishing a pistol to hold it up. Oscar looked as happy as a clam. this was taken , I believe, around the 10th Feb, or even the 12th..

 

[lithgow1]

I have a link and I'm gonna use it!

Re the probable v reasonably possibly true discussion it might be worth having another listen to Christopher Greenland, the retired SA judge. He discuses this from approx. 9.00 on.

Bongani -on inadmissible evidence defence expert - YouTube

 

[Feynman]

True, though iirc he'd woken during the first set of "bangs" so may not have heard them all, plus that doesn't gel with what Stander had testified that Stipp had told him(4+4)... so yea, there are questions as to the actual number of "bangs" that he heard but not that there were some.

Mrs. Stipp is adamant about 3 bangs in the first set. She testified she was awake, lying in bed with the flu, before the first bang.

 

[Lyra500]

Several people have made this comment. It is not entirely true. Roux did get Mr Nhlengethwa to replicate the crying he heard, it just wasn't quite as dramatic (or memorable) as the two women's.

I think the key point is that all three witnesses were trying to replicate the crying which they say they heard, not screaming, What they heard probably was indeed OP after he had shot Reeva.

 

[Trooper]

:dunno::dunno::dunno:

I think the key point is that all three witnesses were trying to replicate the crying which they say they heard, not screaming, What they heard probably was indeed OP after he had shot Reeva.

I have no reason to doubt Mr N's testimony in that regard to him hearing a man moan 'oo nooo please nooo'... what I do wonder about is .. what was the context??

was it when he realised he was in that instant bidding farewell to life as he knew it? was it fright?? was it terror? ( because I believe Oscar did have moments of terror, deep terror as he testified to, just not when he said it happened.. ) was it fury at himself? was it the inability to conjure up some sort of reason for this catastrophic moment?

I dunno!!..

 

[Viper]

I have a link and I'm gonna use it!

Re the probable v reasonably possibly true discussion it might be worth having another listen to Christopher Greenland, the retired SA judge. He discuses this from approx. 9.00 on.

Bongani -on inadmissible evidence defence expert - YouTube

Wait a minute. That well respected retired South African judge is saying that Judge Masipa and the two assessors actually need to believe OPs story is true. He also said that all of this "reasonably possibly true" stuff gets canceled out if they don't actually believe his story is true. Not just possible, they must believe that it is true. So what's up with the past months worth of arguing here at WS to the opposite? Some here were saying that the court must give OP the benefit of any and all doubts on any and all of his lies and contradictions, IIRC.

 

[james83]

Several people have made this comment. It is not entirely true. Roux did get Mr Nhlengethwa to replicate the crying he heard, it just wasn't quite as dramatic (or memorable) as the two women's.

That is not true at all, i suggest you listen again.

 

[G.bng]

The defense "ear" witnesses where not the only ones that admitted on the stand that they had been following the trial in some form or fashion. I include those as well in my "allowed their testimony to be influenced by what they have seen, heard and/or read".

Mea culpa... I thought you were referring to the defence witnesses. But I still say that if the defence witnesses "allowed their testimony to be influenced by what they have seen, heard and/or read" they sure didn't do a very good job considering all the media stuff flying around the first days and weeks after the event.

And now I just realised we are using the word "allowed", which is a complete misnomer here. The "contamination" of a witnesses recollection is not to do with a witness "allowing" their recall to be influenced it happens naturally with no intention nor even realisation. There are many studies on the reliability of witnesses that explain this.

PD. In any case, the original discussion was not about witnesses following the trial after they had given their statement, it was the reliability or not of witnesses that didn't give statements immediately and how that could, not always, and not necessarily in this case, cause a judge or jury to give that testimony less weight than had the witness given it within days of the event.

 

[Giles]

That is not true at all, i suggest you listen again.

I just listened again. My original post was accurate.

Roux: You heard this very loud crying. Could you hear what the person was saying?

Mr N: One thing that I picked up … it was basically “No, please, please, no” (immitating what he heard)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVh9WQES2qI

18:00

 

[Viper]

Snipped

...it was the reliability or not of witnesses that didn't give statements immediately and how that could, not always, and not necessarily in this case, cause a judge or jury to give that testimony less weight than had the witness given it within days of the event.

Is that your opinion or is that a fact? If the later, please share a link. Personally I have never heard of this.

My own opinion about this group of witnesses is that they are independent and have nothing to gain by giving their testimony about what they heard and saw that night. I'm not on board with anyone that wants to taint their credibility as witnesses just because they were either hesitant to get involved at first, or because they did not feel that they were needed at first.

Further, Roux tried something similar with each of the witnesses but IIRC he Failed. :smile: