Trial Discussion Thread #36 - 14.05.09 Day 29

[patCee]

I'm glad this one has come back up for renewed discussion. I have listened to it several times now and each time I'm getting what sounds like a short word beginning with "h" between "why" and "she's". This leaves me unsure of exactly what he was saying. Can anyone fill in that blank or tell me I'm as deaf as Woollie?
Certainly that statement looks very bad for OP but the conveniently blurred articulation might get him off the hook. If for instance he meant to say, "I wanted to ask Reeva whether [or if] she was phoning the police," this might save his bacon.

Sorry I made a gaffe myself recently through mis-hearing :blushing: so can't risk that one again.

I suspect you're right though, and that's why Nel didn't pick up on it.

 

[DebinGA]

Wonder if he will try that with the judge after she read's her verdict.

His whole weeping/wailing/retching courtroom schtick has been a cynical performance aimed at influencing m'lady imo.

 

[Murphys_Law]

Cheers soozie. I'll go back and have a read of that day's thread.

Dilligaf, here is the original post
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - Trial Discussion Thread #25 - 14.04.14, Day 22

I think it is in trial thread 25

 

[Nausicaa]

I still awaiting the lack of blood on the toilet walls.. It's strange to me

Not sure it's strange, but to my mind it highlights the inadequacy of the forensic recontruction. I know that the ballistics expert is different from the blood expert, who is different again from the pathologist and so on, but their findings need to be correlated to give us an accurate reconstruction of what happened inside that W.C.

The angle of the holes in the door, the position of the injuries, the behaviour of the bullets and fragments inside the body, the ricochets, the blood spatter in quantity, location, angle and force of projection...all of these are facts that need to be correlated. Instead of which we get the information piecemeal and we haven't even been told how much blood she had lost or how much blood was recovered in towels etc or whether the lav had been flushed. And we have experts vaguely alluding to error margins which are inadequately quantified.

Surely if each expert does his job and reports the exact facts with the proper error margin a computerized reconstruction of when, where and how Reeva was hit and fell could be produced.
I find it unacceptable that the only reconstruction that makes perfect sense to me is the one provided on WS by Barnacle and not the ones offered in court.

 

[soozieqtips]

Did the prep school coach then take OP in to his arms and stroke OPs head? :wink:

It's beyond weird, isn't it? No wonder the majority of his g/friends were so young, and no wonder he wasn't capable of handling a relationship in any kind of mature fashion. It's like he became emotionally stunted when his mother died, and still reacts like a stroppy teenager to anything that upsets him.

 

[BritsKate]

Thanks. Yes that's what I mean. He wants to create stuff that puts her in his bedroom to discount the fact she MAY have been in the spare room - he doesn't want any innocent falling out/arguing to be highlighted, which he presumes will lead incorrectly to premeditated murder.



Considering possibilities/options . . . Frustrating . .

An argument alone isn't suggestive of murder though. Had he stated we rowed, she was asleep in the spare room so we could both calm down, I heard a noise, and so on...though one could question why she was using the master bath and how she got in the bedroom when it was barred with a bat...

But apart from that, there have been a great many women over the years to "disappear" after an argument with a significant other. The men who haven't been charged for murder, due to lack of evidence, isn't all that short either. With a body, and SA's strict wording on what constitutes an unlawful killing, OP would undoubtedly still have been arrested BUT it would ironically be better for him, legally, to admit an argument than for there to be evidence to support an argument he's refuting. He looks so much worse lying about it. I tend to reason, and I realise you disagree, that Oscar can't admit to an argument earlier because the screaming and yelling heard was the argument rapidly escalating.

JMO


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

 

[DebinGA]

I still awaiting the lack of blood on the toilet walls.. It's strange to me

IIRC Mangena said the hip shot (no exit wound), arm bent close to her body (exit wound with bullet then hitting her shoulder (no exit wound), head shot (exit wound left blood on tiles over mag rack). I may misremember what he said, but in that scenario I wouldn't expect much blood on the cubicle walls. Wollie seemed reluctant to even admit the presence of blood on wall over the mag rack when Nel pointed him to it. I'm not qualified to say anything about guns, but the hollow points "mushrooming" in the body may result in less blood than regular ammo that just went in and out would have.

 

[Cherwell]

I'm glad this one has come back up for renewed discussion. I have listened to it several times now and each time I'm getting what sounds like a short word beginning with "h" between "why" and "she's". This leaves me unsure of exactly what he was saying. Can anyone fill in that blank or tell me I'm as deaf as Woollie?
Certainly that statement looks very bad for OP but the conveniently blurred articulation might get him off the hook. If for instance he meant to say, "I wanted to ask Reeva whether [or if] she was phoning the police," this might save his bacon.

I hear "I wanted to ask Reeva why if she was phoning the police". He definitely says "why", then slips in "if". Perhaps he was trying to correct his mistake, replacing the why with if, but the "why" is very clear (to my ears, at least).

 

[JudgeJudi]

Not sure it's strange, but to my mind it highlights the inadequacy of the forensic recontruction. I know that the ballistics expert is different from the blood expert, who is different again from the pathologist and so on, but their findings need to be correlated to give us an accurate reconstruction of what happened inside that W.C.

The angle of the holes in the door, the position of the injuries, the behaviour of the bullets and fragments inside the body, the ricochets, the blood spatter in quantity, location, angle and force of projection...all of these are facts that need to be correlated. Instead of which we get the information piecemeal and we haven't even been told how much blood she had lost or how much blood was recovered in towels etc or whether the lav had been flushed. And we have experts vaguely alluding to error margins which are inadequately quantified.

Surely if each expert does his job and reports the exact facts with the proper error margin a computerized reconstruction of when, where and how Reeva was hit and fell could be produced.
I find it unacceptable that the only reconstruction that makes perfect sense to me is the one provided on WS by Barnacle and not the ones offered in court.

All the strands will be brought together in the heads of argument (closing argument) by each counsel.

 

[JudgeJudi]

I hear "I wanted to ask Reeva why if she was phoning the police". He definitely says "why", then slips in "if". Perhaps he was trying to correct his mistake, replacing the why with if, but the "why" is very clear (to my ears, at least).

I agree but it's the interpretation that makes it tricky. I hear
"I wanted to ask Reeva why - if she was phoning the police".

People do that sort of thing all the time in conversation.

 

[sleuth-d-]

I read a story from his prep school coach about how, when OP didn't make the team (rugby iirc), he came and sat beside the coach and rested his head on his shoulder and begged him to reconsider, which he did ... and thought how odd that scenario from a teenage boy sounded to me. OP learned early how to cultivate pity and use it to his advantage.

where are you reading the rugby story from, is there an online article? i have read similar in his book, but am not sure it can be copied hear due to copyright. tia

 

[soozieqtips]

Surely you recognise Barnacle?

I certainly do.

Recognise Barnacle as who?

 

[Interested Bystander]

This has been discussed before. Yes, it seems even with a murder conviction you can have bail.

I think it was I who got involved with that thread. I have no experience in law whatsoever and was reading about SA appeals where it stated that if on bail before the trial, at appeal for conviction, it was very likely that bail would be granted if there had been no intervening problems. However, I did point out in one of the posts that the information I gleaned did not mention murder or guns. I also said that I thought OP, being who he is and how his family seem to be able to pull strings, that he might well stay out on bail, even if convicted. I was so surprised he got his original bail because in SA being charged with a Schedule 6 usually prevents bail (I think it is the sole purpose of Schedule 6) yet he managed to circumvent that.

I am hoping Barnacle can shed some light on what might happen, given that Oscar already does not seem to be required by to abide by norms of SA law. He even managed to get virtually all his bail conditions thrown out.

I am more than happy to be proved totally wrong as I think he should be imprisoned for what has happened, assuming he is given a guilty verdict. Like Barnacle, I don't think he will get the full 25 year sentence - it is only a gut feeling I have. I am hoping for 15 years but I still won't be surprised if it is CH and he gets far less than that, and possibly a non-custodial sentence, a large fine and correctional supervision. If this were to happen, I would be utterly horrified.

 

[Nausicaa]

All the strands will be brought together in the heads of argument (closing argument) by each counsel.

I expect you're right JJ, but this still means that the correlation of the forensic evidence and reconstruction of the ("alleged"!) crime is being done by counsel. I'm arguing that a significant part of that should be part of the forensic process.

 

[Nausicaa]

I hear "I wanted to ask Reeva why if she was phoning the police". He definitely says "why", then slips in "if". Perhaps he was trying to correct his mistake, replacing the why with if, but the "why" is very clear (to my ears, at least).

Thanks, Cherwell. If he corrects himself almost instantaneously to "if" then it can't be used against him even though we may suspect that the original error was a lot nearer to the truth than the correction. Personally I couldn't quite make it into "if". I couldn't make any sense out of it.

 

[BritsKate]

BIB. I would love to tell you exactly what I'm thinking about how he is getting along with the 'older' psychologist that he has presently, but that would be deemed far too risqué for this forum. Lets just say that OP does not have a problem with older women holding him and stroking his head! LOL!!!

Its just too weird. I've never seen an expert witness so touchy feely with a patient, much less a defendant.

I gotta say though I think she's simply convenient because she's been duped and now sympathetic to him. Unfortunately, some in the psychological community are not impervious to manipulation. I think Reeva was a convenience because she was intelligent, ingratiating, and looked good on his arm. Its my opinion Oscar uses people while they can benefit him, and tosses them aside when they've served their purpose.


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

 

[Karmady]

I hear "I wanted to ask Reeva why if she was phoning the police". He definitely says "why", then slips in "if". Perhaps he was trying to correct his mistake, replacing the why with if, but the "why" is very clear (to my ears, at least).

I get "I wanted to ask Reeva w__ (maybe why) I hope she's phoning the police" There's no break in cadence to suggest that he slipped and said why and it's clear that he didn't just say "I wanted to ask Reeva why she's phoning the police." I don't think it means anything.

jmo

 

[DebinGA]

.

Myself, I'm convinced they argued, never went to bed and it unfolded from there, jmo.

RSBM for relevance

New York Times article - Jan. 2012 - re OP's sleeping habits:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/magazine/oscar-pistorius.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

Pistorius’s mind and body do not easily come to rest. For a time, he took the TV out of his bedroom so he would not stay up into the early morning watching movies. He programmed his phone so he couldn’t send texts late at night. But he found that he just read into the wee hours. “I’m in bed at like 8 p.m., and I don’t get out of bed till about 7 a.m.,” he said. “But I only sleep for like half of it.

The tv and his beautiful girlfriend were in his room the night he killed Reeva. Then there was the upsetting "hurdle" meeting earlier in the day. And this:

-"When Pistorius competed at the London Olympics, last summer [2012], (a radio host) interviewed the athlete's roommate at the Olympic Village: 'What is it like to sleep in the same room with a superstar?' And he said, 'I moved out. Oscar is always shouting at people on the phone.'"

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/05/17/newser-oscar-pistorius/2193965/

 

[soozieqtips]

Thanks, Cherwell. If he corrects himself almost instantaneously to "if" then it can't be used against him even though we may suspect that the original error was a lot nearer to the truth than the correction. Personally I couldn't quite make it into "if". I couldn't make any sense out of it.

He did almost the same thing with "I retrieved my gun from ne... under the bed". Definitely was going to say 'next' to (which is where it usually was) and then quickly changed it to 'under'.

 

[Viper]

I expect you're right JJ, but this still means that the correlation of the forensic evidence and reconstruction of the ("alleged"!) crime is being done by counsel. I'm arguing that a significant part of that should be part of the forensic process.

I agree. But when I look at the discrepancies in the expert's testimony, meaning that they don't 100% match one another, I understand how and why it happened. It does not seem to me that they confered with one another before finalizing their respective reports. Batman wasn't even given a copy of OPs Bail Affidavit to review prior to finalizing his report, or even before he testified.

I suppose these minor inconsistencies are common in a criminal trial. Nel does not seem the least bit flustered by any of them.

:twocents: