In the final analysis, though, the evidence Saayman presented is almost sure to be widely misunderstood. It may have been less misunderstood had it been reported directly, and it may have been less misunderstood had those most intensely interested in the trial been allowed to see him deliver it. Yet by its very nature, the kind of testimony he provided is packed with caveats and uncertainty, of the kind that easily falls by the wayside, and also needs to be broadly interpreted within a trial rather than in isolation.
For instance, Saayman said Reeva Steenkamp probably last ate less than two hours before she died. That is of enormous importance considering that Pistorius claims the couple were already asleep by that time. Or perhaps not.
What Saayman actually said was complex. Asked what the state of Steenkamp's stomach indicated in terms of time of death, he first delivered what amounted to a mini lecture about the imprecision of any measure he could provide. He noted that this problem had been closely studied because it is both important in investigating murders and particularly fraught with difficulty. He described the imprecision of the science involved. He cited the possibility of very large meals, or very small meals, affecting the time taken to digest food. He cautioned that different types of food are digested at different speeds, that different people digest food at different speeds, and that the same person could digest food at different rates from one day to the next.
That done, and with the weight of his considerable expertise behind it, he finally allowed that Steenkamp, by his best estimate, died within two hours of last eating anything.
How will the court interpret that? If history is any guide, it will not take Saayman's evidence as either bolstering or undermining Pistorius's version of events in itself. Instead it will consider the information for what it is: another piece in a complex puzzle to be considered alongside all the other pieces in trying to determine a sequence of events.
:crazy:
