Trial Discussion Thread #11 weekend thread

[gajonka]

Yes, they have to be more than just a whim - they have to be "reasonably possibly true" ...as I said.

It is at least reasonably possibly true that Oscar thought there was an intruder in the bathroom. It doesn't matter if that belief was reasonable or justified; it only matters if it is possibly true, and in this case it is. So if he really thought there was an intruder and that it was necessary to protect himself, then we're talking about culpable homicide and not murder.

Hot pink highlights.
One may think it is possibly true. What kind of an intruder enters a bathroom and hits the light??? A dim one... a tall tale from a short man.

His story is far fetched. imo. Judge'll decide if it is possibly true... we toss it around til then... still, makes zero sense... the toilet bandit strikes again!!!
Bwahahaha!

love ya,
G

 

[gajonka]

Does anyone recall just when in her testimony she opined--when Roux queried (perhaps regretfully in hindsight)--that OP was "mocking" [mimicking] Reeva when he screamed right after she screamed for "help.".

TIA.

Toward the end... "could have been a mockery"

"...it was bloodcurdling... makes ya cold...," - Roux , Dr. Burger cross

 

[Really?]

I'd not expect him to go into full detail over twitter. You get 140 characters and it leaves for little room for elaboration. The tweet isn't weird just because he was able to joke about it afterwards doesn't mean he wasn't scared at the time. Haven't we all done that, had an irrational reaction to something and been able to laugh about it later? And I don't imagine the fear he felt then was the same as he felt in Feb last year since it wasn't just a sound he heard but a window opening. Only a person could be responsible for such a sound.

Yet he did not check to see that the cause of the "sound" was the other person he was sharing his bed with that night.......

 

[Really?]

I don't wanna toot my own horn, but I already knew that the shot to the hip was first and the shot to the head had to have been last based on the placement of the gun shots and the wounds Reeva sustained and posted as much. I am fairly certain the shot to the hip was first and the shot to the head was last. Why is it important?

It IS important because several witnesses testified under oath that they heard a woman's screams..........Reeva screamed until he got the head shot to silence her. He knew full well who he was shooting at behind that door.

 

[Interested Bystander]

The detective novel so far - there was an argument, Oscar started threatening RS with the cricket bat and chased her into the bathroom. She locked herself in the toilet cubicle and stood immediately behind the door where the row continued. She did not expect him to shoot her, after all it was only an argument, so she did not take cover in the true sense but continued the argument through the door. Because he was so angry she would not open the door, OP became incandescant with rage and started bashing the metal plaque on the bath until it fell off. There was a great deal of noise and RS was terrified. She started screaming in terror, not knowing what OP was up to, but knowing he was out of control. OP needed the argument and screaming to stop, fetched his gun and shot through the door 4 times, with a gap after the first shot. RS screamed in agony but he continued to shoot, killing RS in the process. He had to end her life after the first shot because if he allowed RS to live she would need to go to hospital where the police would become involved and his future would be in ruins.


Unfortunately for OP, Stipp, a neighbour, could see the bathroom with the light on and saw what could only have been OP walking across the room (light coloured shape) from the right (RS had a black vest on). At that point Stipp also sees the bathroom window is closed.

Whilst thinking up his alibi OP knew he had to try to create a story about an intruder and slid the window open. Instead of calling an ambulance OP called Stander and during the following hour, in his mind, confirmed his alibi was to be that there was an intruder, he felt under threat, and shot blindly through the door; conveniently forgetting the argument and screaming.

........................

I am sure someone will use this murder as a storyline for a novel.

 

[gajonka]

It IS important because several witnesses testified under oath that they heard a woman's screams..........Reeva screamed until he got the head shot to silence her. He knew full well who he was shooting at behind that door.

Good one!!

 

[Really?]

He could see her (or notice she was not there) IF HE HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR HER. But why, arguing from the point of view of the DT, should he have been doing that?

erm.......because he heard a noise in the bathroom.

:jail:

 

[MeeBee]

The detective novel so far - there was an argument, Oscar started threatening RS with the cricket bat and chased her into the bathroom. She locked herself in the toilet cubicle and stood immediately behind the door where the row continued. She did not expect him to shoot her, after all it was only an argument, so she did not take cover in the true sense but continued the argument through the door. Because he was so angry she would not open the door, OP became incandescant with rage and started bashing the metal plaque on the bath until it fell off. There was a great deal of noise and RS was terrified. She started screaming in terror, not knowing what OP was up to, but knowing he was out of control. OP needed the argument and screaming to stop, fetched his gun and shot through the door 4 times, with a gap after the first shot. RS screamed in agony but he continued to shoot, killing RS in the process. He had to end her life after the first shot because if he allowed RS to live she would need to go to hospital where the police would be come involved and his future would be in ruins.


Unfortunately for OP, Stipp, a neighbour, could see the bathroom with the light on and saw what could only have been OP walking across the room (light coloured shape) from the right (RS had a black vest on). At that point Stipp also sees the bathroom window is closed.

Whilst thinking up his alibi OP knew he had to try to create a story about an intruder and slid the window open. Instead of calling an ambulance OP called Stander and during the following hour, in his mind, confirmed his alibi was to be that there was an intruder, he felt under threat, and shot blindly through the door; conveniently forgetting the argument and screaming.

........................

I am sure someone will use this murder as a storyline for a novel.

I have thought of the possibility that Oscar was going to stage a murder/break-in but copped out. It should be interesting to hear his testimony. The ten minute gap between the first set of noises and the second is suspicious. If OP does decide to testify, he will be the defense's first witness, according to SA law. So we could see him on the stand as early as next week.

 

[gajonka]

The detective novel so far - there was an argument, Oscar started threatening RS with the cricket bat and chased her into the bathroom. She locked herself in the toilet cubicle and stood immediately behind the door where the row continued. She did not expect him to shoot her, after all it was only an argument, so she did not take cover in the true sense but continued the argument through the door. Because he was so angry she would not open the door, OP became incandescant with rage and started bashing the metal plaque on the bath until it fell off. There was a great deal of noise and RS was terrified. She started screaming in terror, not knowing what OP was up to, but knowing he was out of control. OP needed the argument and screaming to stop, fetched his gun and shot through the door 4 times, with a gap after the first shot. RS screamed in agony but he continued to shoot, killing RS in the process. He had to end her life after the first shot because if he allowed RS to live she would need to go to hospital where the police would be come involved and his future would be in ruins.


Unfortunately for OP, Stipp, a neighbour, could see the bathroom with the light on and saw what could only have been OP walking across the room (light coloured shape) from the right (RS had a black vest on). At that point Stipp also sees the bathroom window is closed.

Whilst thinking up his alibi OP knew he had to try to create a story about an intruder and slid the window open. Instead of calling an ambulance OP called Stander and during the following hour, in his mind, confirmed his alibi was to be that there was an intruder, he felt under threat, and shot blindly through the door; conveniently forgetting the argument and screaming.

........................

I am sure someone will use this murder as a storyline for a novel.

***********

I/m thinking that if there had been elevation... that she would have at least thrown her long pants on,, or at least taken it downstairs,,, or to a separate walled space... that is what stops me from thinking there was something similar to the effect.

AND

I think Reeva grabbed the cricket bat - which prompted dipshi^^ to pull his gun... the .

Love ya,
G

 

[MeeBee]

It IS important because several witnesses testified under oath that they heard a woman's screams..........Reeva screamed until he got the head shot to silence her. He knew full well who he was shooting at behind that door.

If it was Reeva screaming. If what they heard was the bat hitting the door (second set of noises) then screams were Oscar's.

 

[MeeBee]

Yet he did not check to see that the cause of the "sound" was the other person he was sharing his bed with that night.......

I've already explained my armchair psychological reasons for why I think it's plausible that he didn't do this. And trying to figure out what someone logically should have or would have done in a situation does not rule out the possibility that it's the truth. Only that if it was the decision he made it was a very reckless and stupid one.

 

[Trooper]

the science fiction version of the Oscar Pistorious story..

Looking back thru Oscars life, we are confronted with the compelling vision of the ShapeShifter.. . the man who , born with lower legs without bones, then becomes an amputee, then a man on prosthetic legs, and then a man who morphs into the BladeRunner.. and then a killer.


But Oscars deep secret , kept hidden from all until Valentines Eve 2013, when the final and full arc of his talents emerged, and he became the man who not only can run as fast as lightening but can alter the sound of objects, and can change the gender of his voice , at will.

that dark early summers morning , in Pretoria.. a place with a history of harsh judgments, stubborn holdouts to a dead regime, where a gun fired in a restaurant is normal, Oscar began to argue with himself , using his two voices. male and female gender.. then.. Oscar heard a sound in his bathroom.

But was it Oscar himself who made this window opening noise??

he uses his male voice to urge something to 'get out, get out.....'

Time speeds up. Oscar fires a gun 4 times at the closed toilet door. While doing this, he makes it sound like a cricket bat, which, coincidentally, he is planning to use soon to break the toilet door down..

he fires once. he screams like a woman. he fires 3 more times .. he runs , shapeshifting back to the female mode, and screams from his balcony for help.. ....

he dons his false legs, and runs back, picking up his trusty cricket bat, which, as cricket bats do, just lie around handy waiting to sound like gunshots in the right hands.. and those hands are Oscars.. only he can perform this magic.. and he does!! he bangs at the toilet door, lo and behold , he makes 2 whacks sound like 4 gunshots..

As his shapeshifting elements slowly seep out of him, never to be seen again, he drags the body of his target out of her bloody abattoir and staggers downstairs, and there he morphs back into the old Oscar , the heroic champion, the man who will dedicate his life to God if only this dead and mangled body will rise again!! but alas.. his powers, so brief, so swift, so powerfully strange and incomprehensible, so undocumented are gone forever.. gone, gone, gone..

 

[nastasya]

From the evidence...

Almost certainly Burger missed hearing the shots. The time that she heard "bangs" coincides with Stipp hearing a SECOND set of bangs. Almost certainly cricket bat on door. By the time Burger(s) woke up Reeva was dead and certainly not screaming in agony or anything else

What she has convinced herself (and her husband) to be women's screams etc must be...OP High pitched screams/shouts.....

Followed by Desperate bashing with cricket bat to get through toilet door.

And Burger did not hear the ensuing drama and phone calls and cops etc... from a quarter of a mile away.

Your portrayal of Burger's testimony is 100% incorrect.

Burger began her testimony by saying a woman's screams woke her up. She said she heard a woman screaming and a man yell "help" 3 times. Her husband went to the balcony. Then he called security. Then he called security a second time.

Next Burger testified she heard the woman scream again with more intensity, building to a terrified crescendo, followed by four shots... bang...... bang bang bang.... then silence.

It's completely ludicrous to conclude you know what Burger surely heard based on OP's claim that he screamed like a woman.

In fact, no witness described hearing what OP claims. Specifically, OP claims he went to the balcony and screamed, then put on his legs, kicked the door, went and got the cricket bat, and hit the door. That would put at least 30 seconds between his alleged screams and him hitting the door with the bat.

The witnesses describe the terrified woman's screams immediately preceding sounds of gunshots which ended the screams. There was no delay between the end of the screams and the gunshots according to the witnesses.

 

[Interested Bystander]

the science fiction version of the Oscar Pistorious story..

Looking back thru Oscars life, we are confronted with the compelling vision of the ShapeShifter.. . the man who , born with lower legs without bones, then becomes an amputee, then a man on prosthetic legs, and then a man who morphs into the BladeRunner.. and then a killer.


But Oscars deep secret , kept hidden from all until Valentines Eve 2013, when the final and full arc of his talents emerged, and he became the man who not only can run as fast as lightening but can alter the sound of objects, and can change the gender of his voice , at will.

that dark early summers morning , in Pretoria.. a place with a history of harsh judgments, stubborn holdouts to a dead regime, where a gun fired in a restaurant is normal, Oscar began to argue with himself , using his two voices. male and female gender.. then.. Oscar heard a sound in his bathroom.

But was it Oscar himself who made this window opening noise??

he uses his male voice to urge something to 'get out, get out.....'

Time speeds up. Oscar fires a gun 4 times at the closed toilet door. While doing this, he makes it sound like a cricket bat, which, coincidentally, he is planning to use soon to break the toilet door down..

he fires once. he screams like a woman. he fires 3 more times .. he runs , shapeshifting back to the female mode, and screams from his balcony for help.. ....

he dons his false legs, and runs back, picking up his trusty cricket bat, which, as cricket bats do, just lie around handy waiting to sound like gunshots in the right hands.. and those hands are Oscars.. only he can perform this magic.. and he does!! he bangs at the toilet door, lo and behold , he makes 2 whacks sound like 4 gunshots..

As his shapeshifting elements slowly seep out of him, never to be seen again, he drags the body of his target out of her bloody abattoir and staggers downstairs, and there he morphs back into the old Oscar , the heroic champion, the man who will dedicate his life to God if only this dead and mangled body will rise again!! but alas.. his powers, so brief, so swift, so powerfully strange and incomprehensible, so undocumented are gone forever.. gone, gone, gone..

You definitely have a way with words.
:floorlaugh:

 

[soozieqtips]

From the evidence...

Almost certainly Burger missed hearing the shots. The time that she heard "bangs" coincides with Stipp hearing a SECOND set of bangs. Almost certainly cricket bat on door. By the time Burger(s) woke up Reeva was dead and certainly not screaming in agony or anything else

What she has convinced herself (and her husband) to be women's screams etc must be...OP High pitched screams/shouts.....

Followed by Desperate bashing with cricket bat to get through toilet door.

And Burger did not hear the ensuing drama and phone calls and cops etc... from a quarter of a mile away.

Link please? A quarter of a mile is about 400 metres. She was actually 177 metres from OP's house, quite a drastic difference... from your quarter of a mile. You have her at over twice the distance that she actually was.

"I was still sitting in the bed and I heard her screams," Burger, who lives 177 meters (194 yards) from Pistorius' home in an adjacent housing complex, told the Pretoria High Court.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/03/us-safrica-pistorius-idUSBREA220H620140303

If you're guessing about distances, it would be prudent to state that, otherwise it comes across as fact.

 

[nastasya]

I will no longer respond to sarcasm, condescension, or straw man arguments after this, so from now on, if you want me to interact with you, please consider talking to me like an adult.

But as for points 2 and 3: what exactly are you talking about?

To review points 1, 2, and 3:

1. OP said he followed RS into the bathroom and killed her.

2. OP claims he then replicated the sounds of a woman being attacked and killed by gunshots. I.e., he says he screamed like a woman and made gunshot noises with the cricket bat. He claims he did this 30 seconds or so after actually shooting RS with a gun.

3. OP claims that the witnesses who testified hearing a woman screaming in terror followed by gunshots didn't actually hear RS screaming and being killed by the gunshots he fired. Instead he claims that the witnesses heard him replicating the sounds of a terrified woman and the sounds of four gunshots, the exact number he fired in the bathroom.

OP's description of what happened:

"I fired four shots and killed Reeva. It sounded like bang-bang-bang-bang"
(Nobody heard this)

"I then went outside and screamed like a woman and broke the door with a bat. It sounded like:

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Help! Help! Help! Bang bang bang bang"
(Everybody heard this)

So I put it to you, is it overly possible that a man can shoot a woman dead, then within 30 seconds replicate the sounds of shooting a woman dead, AND have all the witnesses ONLY hear the replicated sounds, not the actual sounds of the killing?

 

[soozieqtips]

I'd not expect him to go into full detail over twitter. You get 140 characters and it leaves for little room for elaboration. The tweet isn't weird just because he was able to joke about it afterwards doesn't mean he wasn't scared at the time. Haven't we all done that, had an irrational reaction to something and been able to laugh about it later? And I don't imagine the fear he felt then was the same as he felt in Feb last year since it wasn't just a sound he heard but a window opening. Only a person could be responsible for such a sound.

BBM - a sound he said he heard. If his story is untrue, and he killed Reeva knowing she was behind the door, then he has to embellish that story to give him a reason for shooting.

 

[Trooper]

You definitely have a way with words.
:floorlaugh:

:deadhorse:

 

[james83]

Yes, they have to be more than just a whim - they have to be "reasonably possibly true" ...as I said.

It is at least reasonably possibly true that Oscar thought there was an intruder in the bathroom. It doesn't matter if that belief was reasonable or justified; it only matters if it is possibly true, and in this case it is. So if he really thought there was an intruder and that it was necessary to protect himself, then we're talking about culpable homicide and not murder.

I respectfully disagree and i believe that even going on Oscar's far fetched nonsense we are still talking murder because of 2 things

1) Failure to identify target

2) Firing 4 times

For example, imo if Oscar attempted to identify who was in the toilet and got no reply, it would perhaps be understandable why he might fire 1 shot.

 

[shane13]

Hard to believe, but may happen in a few days.

Now if he calmly speaks about seeing and carrying the dying Reeva w.o. retching, vomiting, etc. on the witness stand, some will say the earlier retching was an act.

After all, the image of her is in his mind when he speaks of that aspect. But the same image was in his mind when witnesses talked of this, or when photos were shown in court.

So it the same retching response is not elicited, some will say the prior retching was an act.

Are we about to see and hear one of the great acting performances of all time, or the testimony of an innocent man with an extremely improbable tale of events?

Will Nel grill him, or take it easy on him?

And what about... "security, everything is fine." [While Reeva was dying near him, but still alive.]