Yes, although I interpret this comment as Judge Greenland indicating that Nel should have been bold and gone for Directus on the basis that, if you fire four black talons into a confined space, it's more than just a possibility that you're going to kill the person behind the door.
Regarding OP going against the brief, this is a distinct possibility. However, his difficulty was that he would have been made aware by his legal team that he didn't satisfy the three stage test for PPD, which, is, no doubt, why he sought to wriggle out of responsibility by claiming that his actions were involuntary. What choice did he have but to obfuscate in the hope that something stuck?
If you remember, the double tap scenario advanced by Roux was knocked firmly on the head by Mangena, which made it even harder for OP to claim PPD:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/oscar-pistorius/10708569/Oscar-Pistorius-trial-Shots-fired-at-Reeva-Steenkamp-gave-her-time-to-scream.html
'Barry Roux, Pistorius's barrister, suggested to Captain Mangena that the four shots had been issued as two "double-taps", implying there was little time for any reaction from the victim.
"It was four in quick succession. That is the version of the accused, two double-taps," he said.
Captain Mangena said there was enough time between the shots for Steenkamp to be knocked from a standing position facing the door to being slumped on top of the magazine rack.
"Look at the wounds sustained by the deceased," he said. "If it's two double taps, then all the wounds would be in the same position. There wouldn't be any time for her to change position in that instance. It's impossible." '
It would have been very interesting indeed to have been a fly on the wall during the client conference following that debacle...
anic:
Ballistics of Double Taps
BIB I don't think it is impossible and here is why.
[video=youtube;surS33GHDt4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=surS33GHDt4"]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=surS33GHDt4[/video]
The above is a video of someone shooting double taps under controlled conditions. The part of interest begins at about 22 seconds in. The shooter fires (in this case 3) double taps.
For anyone not familiar with double taps they seem really fast and they are!
In this video the space between the two shots of each double tap is around 0.225 seconds. The sequence of the first 4 shots from shot 1 to shot 4 is around 0.875 seconds. (If you want to prove it to yourself you can just slow the video down 4x and stopwatch the times then divide the times by 4 )
Mangena implies that the shots would have landed too close together and therefore double taps could not have been fired. We do not know exactly how Reeva fell but we do know that her hip wound made her immediately unstable very much like your leg might go from under you when on ice - gravity immediately takes over.
That being a reasonable assumption how far does an object fall from rest just under gravity in the time between the 1st and 2nd and the 1st and 4th shots.
This is pretty easy to work out using a formula you can Google for yourself:
d = 0.5 x g x t2
Where:
d is the distance fallen from rest in metres
g is acceleration due to gravity (9.8m/s/s)
t2 is the time taken for the object to fall from rest in seconds
(For anyone not up to speed on the physics the mass or weight of the object is not needed as if you eliminate air resistance all bodies accelerate in free fall at the same rate of 9.8 metres per second every second)
So the distance (d) fallen from rest between the first two shots (0.225 seconds) is calculated from:
d = 0.5 x 9.8 x (0.225 x 0.225)
d = 0.25 metres or 25 cm
The distance fallen from rest between the 1st and 4th shots in the double tap sequence is:
d = 0.5 x 9.8 x (0.875 x 0.875)
d = 3.75 metres.
So to summarize given the speed of double taps in the video Reeva would have had time to fall around 25 cm between 1 and 2 and 3.75 metres between 1 and 4 if she was unhindered.
Clearly there was ample time from the hip to the head shot as even if she fell from fully standing to fully laying down that would only have been her height which was considerably less than 3.75 metres.
I would suggest that even if she did not just immediately crumple there is still enough leeway to account for a reasonably possible fall from shot 1 to 4. The shots seem very fast but it may be surprising to some how quickly a person may collapse.
It must also be born in mind that the double taps in the video were fired quickly under ideal circumstances.
There remains the issue of how the second shot could have missed as she may only have fallen around 25cm in order to avoid the second bullet.
There would not have been enough time to fall out of the way just straight vertically but a reasonable scenario would be that her unstable hip would have caused her to collapse in a scissor type motion where her legs initially moved one way and her upper body, being heavier, pulling down in the other direction towards the toilet. This would have allowed a gap for bullet 2 to pass before the other shots hit.
