The Sunday Times published an article in early December and Lisa has now published it in her blog. Im sure youll find it interesting. Here are some paraphrased excerpts and quotes.
OPs greatest victory took place not on a running track but in court on September 11 last year. On that day he learnt that he had been found guilty of culpable homicide the best outcome he could have wished for at the end of a trial in which he had been charged with pre-meditated murder. Last week, he suffered his worst defeat when the SCA overturned the trial verdict and found that when he fired four bullets into a closed bathroom, killing Reeva, he had committed murder. A jail sentence of at least 15 years awaits him.
John Carlin attended a party with OP in the home of Barry Roux hours after Masipa had made it evident in court that the verdict of manslaughter was what he could expect and that she would formally deliver her sentence the next day. He would then be going straight to prison, but at that party Pistorius wore the calm, satisfied look of a man who felt he had been vindicated by the justice system and believed his honour had been saved. He told Roux
I dont give a **** about the sentence, I am not a murderer.
He knew he should expect a five-year sentence but appeared untroubled by the prospect as he chatted politely with guests and took turns to flip steaks and boerewors sausages on the barbecue. It was a boozy party, but Pistorius did not drink alcohol and left early. The last thing he told me before driving home was that for the first time in a long time (since he had shot and killed Reeva 18 months earlier, he had found some peace. OP said, I think I may finally have a decent nights sleep. Presumably he had an even better nights sleep on October 19 this year when he was released from prison into house arrest after serving barely a year of the sentence Masipa had given him. His relief proved short-lived, however as the SCA ruling declared him to be a murderer. If there is any possible consolation it is that the judgment did not find him guilty of intentionally killing Reeva.
His new conviction of dolus eventualis means that he had to have foreseen that firing four bullets into the bathroom door, knowing that there was a human being behind it , would lead to that human beings death. The SCA judgment didnt dispute OPs contention that he believed he was shooting not at Reeva but at an intruder, but it did find that whoever his victim had been, he had shot to kill. Therefore he hadnt acted with fearful recklessness, as Masipa chose to believe, but with the intention to murder.
The judgment, written by Judge Eric Leach, said that to be found guilty of this category of murder it does not mean that a perpetrator must know or appreciate the identity of the victim. OP was guilty of murder in the same way as a person who opens fire and kills someone unknown during a wild shootout in the course of an armed robbery. Judge Leachs analogy was, A person who causes a bomb to explode in a crowded place will probably be ignorant of the identity of his or her victims, but will nevertheless have the intention to kill those who might die in the resultant explosion.
OP, who will feel that the justice system and God have failed him, may be extracting some crumbs of comfort from the knowledge that he will never now be found guilty by a court of law of deliberately killing Reeva, the woman he has always said he loved. However, he will also know that the court of public opinion will beg to differ, with millions around the world convinced that if, as the SCA judgment said, this was a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions he must have known he was killing her and not the intruder of his imagination. He now faces the imminent prospect of arrest prior to a new and lengthy sentence being passed and he is devastated, as his agent, Peet van Zyl, described OPs state of mind to the media.
Carlin said, We had just met for the first time and he sat across from me in his uncles study on a long leather sofa with his head resting on his aunts shoulder. Pale and thin, a pitiful shadow of the Bladerunner,
he looked and sounded like a five-year-old boy whose puppy had just died. As he responded in a quivering, high-pitched voice to my attempts to make conversation, it felt as if at any moment he would collapse onto his aunts bosom and break down sobbing.
That scene I had witnessed was by no means unusual and it was clear to his family, who saw him burst into tears all the time, that the future he foresaw for himself was filled with terrors and little prospect of joy or earthly redemption. He had always prayed a lot and read his Bible, but now he questioned his faith in God.
Uncle Arnold asked OP if he saw any purpose in life to which OP responded that with Gods help he would strive to see a point in carrying on living. He is now the same age as Reeva was when he killed her. He will be asking himself why God has not helped him in his hour of greatest need. And he will be wondering again, possibly in a more despairing mood than ever, whether his own life is still worth living.
Pistoriuss physical freedom and the moral comfort he thought he had found in that first verdict of manslaughter have both been snatched away. Once a hero to millions, he must endure the unending shame of knowing that for many the world over, not least Steenkamps family, he has finally received the punishment that fits the crime.
https://juror13lw.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/murder-verdict-revives-pistorius-suicide-fears.pdf
