Discussion Thread #61 ~ the appeal~

[Trotterly]

Trotterly - from that infamous "leaked" footage legs plus two pairs of socks/stocking inners plus a fumble took about 25 seconds. The inners weren't necessary for placement of the prosthetics.

Now, I'm all for stump health but in an emergency you'd think he'd let that go, wouldn't you? Stumps without inners (x2) and the fumble would take only a few seconds.

In an emergency I think he'd let it all go and grab his gun. If you were scared thought you might be attacked at any moment which would you go for?

 

[lithgow1]

Watched every minute.

So what was your opinion of Roger Dixon`s testimony then? Were you like the many, laymen and lawyers alike, who found it laughable?

 

[lithgow1]

In an emergency I think he'd let it all go and grab his gun. If you were scared thought you might be attacked at any moment which would you go for?

The door.

 

[LemonMousse]

Not excuses but an approach which allows for a defendant who can be innocent of a murder charge but still be wary and self serving on the stand. We need not know why he did not behave like the good little witness that so many demanded yet still enable him to have the effective defence to which he is entitled. Note I say effective not necessarily successful.

You assert that "This can ONLY mean that OP was aware AT THE TIME of the danger to him of shooting into the shower"
This is not correct. It is one possibility. OP denied it and we now need proof (by inference or otherwise) that it was in his head at the time. But none of what he says or says he did at the time supports this and neither does the timeline.

You are making excuses. Actually, it's worse than that.....you are rooting around trying to find any minuscule justification that you can and then presenting it with a flourish thinking that it amounts to "reasonable doubt".

You clearly do not know what reasonable doubt means. I am pretty sure this has been pointed out to you before. An honest debater would make the effort to at least understand the arguments he's trying to make.

OP lied on the stand and was evasive. If his story is true he had no need to be either, and yet he was. "Oh but wait," says you, "there are lots of reasons why he could be evasive and still be innocent". Really? Name one. And, please, don't just name it, give actual evidence supporting your point, if you wouldn't mind.

Do you realise that if your attitude to evidence and reasonable doubt were applied to every criminal case absolutely no one could be convicted of anything? Ever. There is ALWAYS room for doubt...always. This is because we none of us have been blessed with either omniscience or second sight, so we look at the evidence and see where it leads. Indulging in "Well, this hypothesis isn't entirely impossible, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt" gets us nowhere. Unless you are someone who a) doesn't understand how logic or the law works and b) is too desperate to be "right" that all common sense is swept aside.

*sigh* Nel asked why Pistorius didn't shoot a warning shot into the shower. Pistorius answered the question with an explanation.

Why won't you just accept the explanation that came out of his mouth and make a judgement based on that? Why embarrass yourself by pretending that Pistorius didn't really mean that?

 

[LemonMousse]

No additions? No exaggerations? and no agenda?

1. Reeva happily goes to bed, having packed all her clothes neatly away in her bag, including her underwear and the top she was wearing, while leaving her jeans inside-out at the bottom of the bed.

Nel claimed this was evidence of a fight and I guess this is what you think we should conclude. I'm not convinced that a woman involved in an argument or worse would want or need to remove her jeans whether to flee or otherwise. There was no sign of skin scratches or abrasions consistent with the jeans being forcibly removed. So we are to be conclude that someone who packs their bag tidily but leaves jeans on the floor has been murdered.

2. OP wakes in the night and immediately puts his hands over his face. He takes them off long enough to glance over and notice Reeva’s legs under the duvet. He then puts his hands back over his face to get out of bed – pushing aside a duvet that is not actually on him.

No evidence for this or that this was a continuous sequence

3. He walks around to Reeva’s side of the bed, without either looking at her or telling her what he’s doing. She doesn’t ask, either.

You have no way of knowing how they would normally communicate in any situation let lone this one.

4. Once his back is completely turned, Reeva silently scrambles across to his side of the bed and walks totally noiselessly and in the pitch black to the toilet.

Yes his back must have been turned at least until he drew the blinds(?)/curtains making it essentially completely dark. Reeva need not have been silent or walk totally noiselessly if there was fan noise. She only had to move a few feet to get into the corridor where she would not be heard anyway - the floor was marble and part carpeted.

5. Never once facing the bed, OP brings both fans in and positions them at the end of the bed. How he did that with his back to the bed the entire time, I am unable to fathom. He either stood with his back to the bed, and put the fans in front of him and then walked around them, or positioned them with his arms behind him.

6. In spite of the pitch-black room, he notices jeans on the floor. He is bothered by a small LED light enough to want to cover them with said jeans – but not bothered by the lit-up LED display, the light on the TV or the lights on the light switches.

The room was only pitch black after he drew the curtains.

7. He hears a terrifying sound from the bathroom and is frozen with fear. At no point does it cross his mind that it may have been the person sharing the bedroom and bathroom with him making the noise – nope, he’s so convinced it can’t be her, he doesn’t even bother to turn his head and glance in her direction.

This is at the heart of the CH finding.

8. He doesn’t seek to clarify what he’s heard with his awake girlfriend who is feet away from him. He doesn’t wonder if she heard it too and is scared.

9. He feels particularly vulnerable because he’s on his stumps, but doesn’t take a few seconds to put on the legs that are, actually, right next to him.

IIRC this takes of the order of 20 seconds. During this time an intruder could already be making their way to the bedroom. Again part of the CH.

10. He stops being frozen with fear and heads for his gun, making his way around the fans that he has just positioned in front of the bed. He holds into the bed for balance, and says not-a-word to the person who is in it regarding the fact that he believes that there are intruders in the next room and he needs to arm himself.

He did not have to make his way around the fans on his version.

11. He reaches under the bed for the gun, careful not to glance across at the person he believes is in it.

How do you conclude he was careful to avoid glancing across?

12. He stands up, faces the passage and whispers/speaks quietly to Reeva, telling her to get down and call the police without actually telling her why. He is not surprised that she doesn’t ask or that she doesn’t bother to get out of bed and get down as instructed.

We do not know for sure that Reeva could not have reasonably thought that the sound of the bathroom window opening was a strong sign of an intruder

13. He makes his way in terror to the bathroom – ignoring the door that he and Reeva could have escaped through and the panic alarm that would have brought immediate help.

Further steps he could have taken to avoid injury to Reeva

14. He’s so desperate to put himself between the intruders and Reeva that he doesn’t actually check where Reeva is.

15. He is too scared to put the light on but not too scared to start screaming as soon as he starts walking down the passage.

I don't understand why one precludes the other.

16. He is walking slowly and quietly down the passage, screaming.

Nonsense which was never in evidence.

17. Reeva hears the screaming but is too scared of the intruder to respond and give away her position, so she slams the door.images-2

There is no evidence that she deliberately slammed the door rather than trying to close it quietly and accidently slamming it in haste for example.

18. OP screams at Reeva to call the police. She fails to do this even though she has her phone with her.

You imply that Reeva is not scared and thinking straight and her attention is not taken with what might be going on beyond the closed door.

19. OP gets to the bathroom doorway, and stops screaming so that the intruders won’t know where he is.

Having got to the end of the corridor and not knowing that the intruder(s) had left why would you shout as you looked around the corner making yourself more of an obvious target?

20.When he sees that there’s no one in the bathroom, he starts screaming again.

IIRC he said he was screaming throughout

21. Reeva stands facing the door, making no effort to speak to her screaming boyfriend – who is now standing right outside the toilet door. She doesn’t wonder if he wants to come into the toilet and hide with her; she selfishly hides, silently locking the door and says nothing.

22. Somehow she steps backwards to knock the magazine rack on the other side of the toilet before immediately stepping forward again to the position she was in when she was shot.

Are you suggesting that she could not have moved inside the toilet?

23. OP has many thoughts running though his head – a story about a neighbour being tied up in his house, the crime rate in SA, the builder leaving a ladder outside his house, the folly of shooting a warning shot into the shower in case it ricochets and hits him, but a noise from the toilet has all thoughts disappearing from his mind like a fart in the wind and he shoots once, moves position and shoots three more times without actually meaning to….all the while screaming.

There was expert testimony on both sides about the trajectories. Matching the trajectories to the wounds depends entirely on how quickly Reeva fell after the hip shot and no one knew what exactly occurred behind the closed door not even OP.

24. He stands screaming for a bit, then walks backwards out of the bathroom screaming.

25. He gets to the bedroom, screaming, and is a trifle surprised to see that Reeva is not sitting in bed after hearing four gunshots from the en suite bathroom.

No exaggeration for the purpose of mockery here then?

26. He heads across the bed backwards, keeping his eyes on the passage….she’s not there. He walks along the gap between the bed and the curtains; she’s not there. She’s not behind the curtains either.

27. Gasp. Was that Reeva in the toilet? He doesn’t even bother checking to see whether she’s run out of the bedroom – that would be a ridiculous thing to do given that the shooting was in the bathroom, so he sees no sense in even checking (yes, he actually said that).

Surely if you thought you may have shot the wrong person in the toilet you would want to check if they were OK not waste time looking elsewhere which you could do later as they would now not be in immediate danger

28. He runs with his gun back to the bathroom and tries to pull open the door – he’s still scared it may be an intruder, and hopeful it’s not Reeva, but he doesn’t bother checking to see if there’s a ladder outside the window.

As above

29. He runs back to the bedroom, parts the curtains and shouts for help from the balcony….holding a cocked gun in his hand because he’s still scared.

30. He puts down his gun, sits on the bed, looks for his socks, puts on his legs then picks up his gun again to run to the bathroom – all in the pitch black because he tells us he never opened the curtains or put on the light.

I don't recall the evidence for this

31. Kicking the door doesn’t work, so he runs back for his bat. He then runs back to the bathroom with a cocked gun in one hand and a cricket bat in the other.

* Oh, I almost forgot – throughout all of this he is screaming like a woman, except when he goes onto the balcony to shout for help in a man’s voice.

All of the above takes him 15 minutes

There's no prosecution timeline

32. Back in the bathroom, he puts down the gun and hits the door three times with enough ferocity that six people think they are gunshots. Four of those people had slept through the real gunshots 15 minutes earlier – seemingly not bothered by a sound 1000 times louder than the sound that they are hearing now.

The noise may be of that order of difference but loudness is the human perception of noise and is some 2 orders less.
Even inside the house Frank heard nothing useful. I don't see how you can be sure a gunshot would wake distant witnesses or witnesses with airconditioning on and windows closed.

33. Once he breaks down the door and sees Reeva bloody and not breathing, he is as silent as a monk. No more screaming – he is too “sad” to scream anymore.

Is it unreasonable that fear of an intruder and panic would disappear when it became obvious to OP what had in fact occurred?

34. In spite of screaming at Reeva to call the police three times, it doesn’t occur to him to do the same himself now.images-6

Why would it, there was no intruder?!

35. He sits sobbing over her, then pulls her against him, feeling her blood run on to him – although it only manages to stain his shorts and forearms.

36. He is so distraught by Reeva’s condition, that getting medical help for her is not his first thought….calling a friend is.

37. He psychically knows that Netcare will tell him to get Reeva to hospital himself so he calls Stander to help him lift her so he can do this.

Did he not call for an ambulance?

38. He then calls Netcare to be given the worst medical advice of all time – to take a woman who has been shot three times, once in the head, to hospital himself.

No ambulances available then. A casualty with their brains blown out will not last long without hospital treatment. Without the latest expert medical advice would you wait and watch her die?

39. He calls Security for help, then sobs down the phone to them. When they call him back, he forgets to ask for help and tells them he is fine.

40. He runs downstairs, careful to switch off the alarm first and opens the door, crying.

"Careful?"

41. Coming back upstairs he smashes his way through the bedroom double-doors before simply unlatching them.

42. He carries Reeva through the bedroom, leaving a dissected line of blood that is half on carpet and half on the duvet on the bed – which the police can handily line up later making it look like the duvet was on the floor all along and that OP is one enormous great big fat liar.

There was never any evidence that I saw that the blood trail was not on the carpet under the duvet

Oh dear. I am almost moved to pity. All that work, all that typing and all that energy...and you completely and utterly missed the point. Again.

I don't care what Nel said or thought. I don't care about your take on things...that piece was the testimony from Pistorius' own mouth.

Testimony IS evidence. Do you understand that? It's primary evidence. So remarks like "There's no evidence of him walking carefully down the passage screaming" are bonkers. Yes, there is.....HE SAID SO.

But when you are so desperate to let this killer off the hook that you are reduced to dismissing what he himself said on the basis that he was nervous and didn't really mean it, then what's the point of even attempting a sensible discussion with you?

Either engage with the evidence or don't. Deluding yourself that there isn't any is endearing you to no one and I think we're all starting to find you rather tiresome. I know I am.

I recognise you, by the way from another forum. Your arguments have not improved. And I know for a fact that I have tried to explain reasonable doubt to you before. Yet still you insist on mistakenly thinking it means "not impossible".

 

[Deleted member 102539]

Yesterday an ancient murder mystery in TV:

Husband shooting lover of his wife after acting like coming home suddenly in the night (all planned). Lover flees along the roof into the garden, husband exits the front door and bangs him down to death. Thereafter husband screams at a nonexistent "burglar" and shoots 3-4 bullets in direction of between house corner and fence/hedge (alleged escape route of the "2. burglar"). Then husband calls police, claiming the dead man on the doorstep would be the 1st burglar. The 2nd burglar would have escaped, of course with stolen property.

Interesting - and reminded me of OP and his possibly bullets into nowhere and screaming, when there is no reason to scream. Knowingly I had never seen a "burglar"-fairy tale like that except the OP fairy tale while trial.

 

[Trotterly]

I note with great interest Trotterly that you bolded the first part of the quote below and ignored the bit I have italicised.

39. He calls Security for help, then sobs down the phone to them. When they call him back, he forgets to ask for help and tells them he is fine.

Under the circumstances I don't think it means very much as he had already called for help from Stander and called security himself. If he intended to deliberately delay investigation then why make phone calls?

 

[lithgow1]

Snipped from Trotterly`s post:

42. He carries Reeva through the bedroom, leaving a dissected line of blood that is half on carpet and half on the duvet on the bed – which the police can handily line up later making it look like the duvet was on the floor all along and that OP is one enormous great big fat liar.

There was never any evidence that I saw that the blood trail was not on the carpet under the duvet

So what is your point here? For me, one of the most damning pieces of evidence was that blood trail. You claim that you want to go by the evidence, which includes what Pistorius said while under oath. He claimed that the duvet was on the bed. Not that he thought it may have been, or as far as he could recall it was. No, he was insistent that it was on the bed. So, are we in agreement that in Pistorius` evidence he was adamant it was on the bed? No wriggle room for faulty memories here - again I repeat, he insisted it was on the bed and as such, that photo proves he was lying. No way could police have `tampered` with that and lined up the duvet on the floor with the blood on the carpet. So how do you explain that evidence without resorting to some `Oscar`s memory was wrong` cop-out?

 

[lithgow1]

Under the circumstances I don't think it means very much as he had already called for help from Stander and called security himself. If he intended to deliberately delay investigation then why make phone calls?

Why make the first call to Stander? Why not immediately try to gain professional help rather phoning a friend with no medical training? Does that not seem in the least little bit suspicious to you or would you react to an in house emergency by first calling a mate? He hung up on security and when they called back he said either (accounts vary) he was fine or everything was fine. If that doesn`t seem suss to you then I really don`t know what would.

 

[Trotterly]

The door.

I note that you have not answered the question.

 

[lithgow1]

I note that you have not answered the question.

Um, `the door` was my answer. That is what I would of gone for and it is also what OP could have done. If he had, and his story of the events is true, Reeva Steenkamp would be alive wouldn't she?

 

[lithgow1]

Under the circumstances I don't think it means very much as he had already called for help from Stander and called security himself. If he intended to deliberately delay investigation then why make phone calls?

Dunno. Maybe he thought that four gunshots, bashing on a door with a cricket bat and loud screaming followed by shouts for help at 3 in the morning may have awakened the neighbours and if he didn`t do it, someone else would.

 

[Trotterly]

Um, `the door` was my answer. That is what I would of gone for and it is also what OP could have done. If he had, and his story of the events is true, Reeva Steenkamp would be alive wouldn't she?

But that's still not answering my question. Would you go for the gun or your prostheses if you thought an attack imminent?

 

[lithgow1]

But that's still not answering my question. Would you go for the gun or your prostheses if you thought an attack imminent?

I am not a gun owner so I guess it would be the prostheses and the door, making sure my girlfriend was with me, though I wonder why you chose to choose the phrase that an `attack (was) imminent`? He hadn`t even seen anyone and he could have kept an eye on the hallway without exposing himself or her to any danger but he chose not to, so where is this `imminent attack` that you speak of coming from? The other end of the dark hallway? The dark hallway he then made his way down, moving closer and closer towards the source of your imaginary `imminent attack`? All sounds somewhat more dangerous than putting on the prostheses and getting the hell out of there. Or putting on the prostheses and THEN going down the hallway. So to lob the question back, what would you have done - gone down the hallway on your stumps or put your prostheses on first?

Anyway, now I have answered your question how about you return the courtesy and answer one of mine. You can forget the Roger Dixon one if you want but a response to #688 would be appreciated.

 

[LemonMousse]

But that's still not answering my question. Would you go for the gun or your prostheses if you thought an attack imminent?

Silly question to ask anyone on this thread. None of us are gun owners and none of us use prostheses.

FACT: on his stumps, OP is very disabled. With his legs on he becomes one of the fastest men on the planet. His vulnerability is therefore a thing of the past after taking a few seconds to his legs on.

If he felt vulnerable because he didn't have his legs on, then the natural remedy would be to put them on, surely?

And there were (supposedly) two people in that room. He could have asked Reeva to grab his gun.

Oh - and by the way...if there was evidence of blood under the duvet, don't you think Roux would have presented it, loudly and clearly? Bit daft to therefore say "I saw no evidence that blood wasn't under the duvet"!!!!

There was clearly no blood under the duvet. The duvet was on the floor when he carried Reeva out. Be brave and face the consequences of that and what it actually means.

 

[soozieqtips]

Watched every minute.

To be honest, I'm surprised. You don't recall quite a few of the details (details that make OP's story stranger than fiction).

 

[Trotterly]

You are making excuses. Actually, it's worse than that.....you are rooting around trying to find any minuscule justification that you can and then presenting it with a flourish thinking that it amounts to "reasonable doubt".

You clearly do not know what reasonable doubt means. I am pretty sure this has been pointed out to you before. An honest debater would make the effort to at least understand the arguments he's trying to make.

OP lied on the stand and was evasive. If his story is true he had no need to be either, and yet he was. "Oh but wait," says you, "there are lots of reasons why he could be evasive and still be innocent". Really? Name one. And, please, don't just name it, give actual evidence supporting your point, if you wouldn't mind.

Do you realise that if your attitude to evidence and reasonable doubt were applied to every criminal case absolutely no one could be convicted of anything? Ever. There is ALWAYS room for doubt...always. This is because we none of us have been blessed with either omniscience or second sight, so we look at the evidence and see where it leads. Indulging in "Well, this hypothesis isn't entirely impossible, so let's give him the benefit of the doubt" gets us nowhere. Unless you are someone who a) doesn't understand how logic or the law works and b) is too desperate to be "right" that all common sense is swept aside.

*sigh* Nel asked why Pistorius didn't shoot a warning shot into the shower. Pistorius answered the question with an explanation.

Why won't you just accept the explanation that came out of his mouth and make a judgement based on that? Why embarrass yourself by pretending that Pistorius didn't really mean that?

BIB1
I think the most obvious reason for his wariness and tendency to argue rather than answer questions etc was contained in his opening statement which you may recall was an unusual move at the opening of a SA trial. The fact that in the eyes of the defence that the police relied on an unsubstantiated argument between OP and Reeva. I'm sure OP saw this as part of being "fitted up" for murder along with various other police actions. If he did kill Reeva by accident then this would be an explanation for his behaviour on the stand. But of course you will only realise this seen from the perspective of him not having murdered Reeva.

BIB2
I'm quite happy with the CH conviction and feel that was proved beyond reasonable doubt.

BIB3
A judgement really requires more information than just the one short statement. I think it should be considered in context. In this case OP's tendency not to answer questions simply and directly. He often gave what he probably saw as a self serving reply or one tinged with sarcasm or criticism. I think it reasonable to say that any gun owner would be aware of the dangers of ricochet in such a location so its not really about knowing it's about having regard to it at the time. Since he never intended to fire the need to have regard only came between the noise and pulling the trigger.

 

[Trotterly]

Oh dear. I am almost moved to pity. All that work, all that typing and all that energy...and you completely and utterly missed the point. Again.

I don't care what Nel said or thought. I don't care about your take on things...that piece was the testimony from Pistorius' own mouth.

Testimony IS evidence. Do you understand that? It's primary evidence. So remarks like "There's no evidence of him walking carefully down the passage screaming" are bonkers. Yes, there is.....HE SAID SO.

But when you are so desperate to let this killer off the hook that you are reduced to dismissing what he himself said on the basis that he was nervous and didn't really mean it, then what's the point of even attempting a sensible discussion with you?

Either engage with the evidence or don't. Deluding yourself that there isn't any is endearing you to no one and I think we're all starting to find you rather tiresome. I know I am.

I recognise you, by the way from another forum. Your arguments have not improved. And I know for a fact that I have tried to explain reasonable doubt to you before. Yet still you insist on mistakenly thinking it means "not impossible".

Your list:
"16. He is walking slowly and quietly down the passage, screaming"

My comment:
"Nonsense which was never in evidence"

You are now saying "carefully down the passage screaming"

I understand you want to try to make a nonsense out of his evidence but I'm only interested in what it (ultimately) proves.

 

[Trotterly]

Snipped from Trotterly`s post:

42. He carries Reeva through the bedroom, leaving a dissected line of blood that is half on carpet and half on the duvet on the bed – which the police can handily line up later making it look like the duvet was on the floor all along and that OP is one enormous great big fat liar.

There was never any evidence that I saw that the blood trail was not on the carpet under the duvet

So what is your point here? For me, one of the most damning pieces of evidence was that blood trail. You claim that you want to go by the evidence, which includes what Pistorius said while under oath. He claimed that the duvet was on the bed. Not that he thought it may have been, or as far as he could recall it was. No, he was insistent that it was on the bed. So, are we in agreement that in Pistorius` evidence he was adamant it was on the bed? No wriggle room for faulty memories here - again I repeat, he insisted it was on the bed and as such, that photo proves he was lying. No way could police have `tampered` with that and lined up the duvet on the floor with the blood on the carpet. So how do you explain that evidence without resorting to some `Oscar`s memory was wrong` cop-out?

IIRC the evidence was blood which appeared on the carpet next to blood on the top of the duvet. If there ever was a photo of "a dissected line of blood" then I did not see it. Was there blood under that part of the duvet?

 

[Trotterly]

Dunno. Maybe he thought that four gunshots, bashing on a door with a cricket bat and loud screaming followed by shouts for help at 3 in the morning may have awakened the neighbours and if he didn`t do it, someone else would.

Yes, maybe.