Thank God for some sense among the hysteria.
As you said earlier Nel has just won a landmark ruling in the SCA albeit with the help of James Grant, but the credit is mostly his as lead advocate of the prosecution team.
Nel had Oscar nailed from the beginning despite Roux preparing Oscar perfectly. People with a highly empathic disposition are often targeted by sociopaths and Masipa and assessor Janet Henzen Du Toit got the full works at the beginning of the trial. Roux would have known their vulnerabilities and Oscar was prepared for it perfectly and as an out and out sociopath, the perfect man to do it. Dr Jane & Tim McGregor, here in the UK, did some great work on this field of psychology and called it "the empathy trap". Masipa and Du Toit were lambs to the slaughter and this was exacerbated by the snake oil salesman Roux and his machiavellian ministrations.
Against this background Nel enters the fray and in one day of cross examination, like Jesus anger at the moneychangers in the temple, he tells him he is a hypocrite, a liar, and rotten to the core and throws his whole charade of an apology and his version(s) in to the gutter where it belonged.
From the moment he stood and adjusted his robe, all of us watching with our hearts in our mouth he didn't waste one second getting down to business in what was a relentless cross-examination:
Nel: "You killed a person. You killed Reeva Steenkamp, that's what you did. You shot and killed her. "Say 'Yes' - say 'I killed Reeva Steenkamp'."
Pistorius: "I have a responsibility to Reeva and myself to tell the truth."
Nel: "You will not hide things from the court."
Pistorius: "I'm human, I have faults, I have sins. I'm a Christian. The Lord came down to this world for people who have sinned."
Nel: "As a Christian you will not lie."
Pistorius: "The discharge was accidental. I believed there was someone in the toilet coming out to attack me. I never intended to shoot anyone ... I went to the bathroom and felt in danger. I didn't have much time to think. I just discharged my firearm. I didn't intend to shoot someone. I shot out of fear. I didn't shoot at someone. I didn't intend to kill anyone...I didn't have time to think about what I was doing. I had finger on my trigger. I didn't intend to shoot anyone. I fired before I had a moment to comprehend what was happening."
Nel:
"Was the only way out for you to shoot an intruder?"
Pistorius: "I didn't have time to think or not think about shooting an intruder. My life was in danger and I was worried what could happen to Reeva. People had been tied up on the estate before. Before thinking I fired four shots. When I realised the scale of what was happening I stopped firing. It was an accident, the way I discharged the firearm. I didn't intend to shoot."
Nel had hounded him all day, switching from one topic to another, leading us to cry out- Just get to the bloody point! All the time he was softening him up. He knew Oscar was a sociopath and forced him into lie after lie and brought together what seemed like a bewildering mess of threads into a scalpel-sharp accusation at the end of the day. Was that the only way out for you to shoot an intruder? This was a massively important piece of testimony for Pistorius and a critical component of the trial. Here's why.
Pistorius was convicted of murder because it was shown that he intended to kill - period. It doesn't matter who - just that he intended to kill someone and that the force he used was disproportionately excessive given the circumstances.
Remember, in order to make out the charge of murder against Pistorius, it had to be shown that he had the requisite intent to kill and followed through on that intent. Pistorius wanted to avoid a murder conviction and look to settle on a lesser charge of culpable homicide, which meant killing someone by accident.
So despite firing four shots through a locked bathroom door at 3am, Pistorius repeatedly declared that he "didn't intend to shoot anyone" and the discharge was an "accident". These statements were designed to establish that Pistorius lacked the intent needed to make out a conviction of murder.
Parts of Pistorius' testimony shows that he was well prepared by Roux. He hit on the key legal points in ordinary English.
However, the issue of plausibility remained. As Nel pointed out, "was the only way out for you to shoot the intruder?". For example, he could have grabbed Reeva and fled. He could have taken up a defensive position and called for the intruder to get out. He could have hidden in a cupboard or barricaded himself in another room. He did none of these things. He went full on assault mode and hunted down the intruder and he fired a pre-loaded, high calibre, zombie-stopping weapon, not once, but four times, switching position and aim throughout.
For all of Roux's charm, eloquence, sharp legal brain and command of English, he whined, pleaded, exhorted, pontificated for weeks in that courtroom but it was the sometimes awkward, incogent, pitbull Nel who brutally led Pistorius and his family on a merry dance that day and asked him a seemingly inconsequential question that barely registered a comment. But it was as a rapier to the heart of Pistorius' defence. There's a saying in Latin: Fides et Ratio... Faith and Reason. I've always had faith in Nell and his reasoning has been tested in the crucible of the SCA. For me he is a hero. I care not for his seemingly poor command of English, or his awkward deference when before a judge and I join you as one of his many apologists.
Fides et ratio people!! As Mr Jitty rightly said, he has to do his time eventually.
