Trial Discussion Thread #19 - 14.04.07, Day 17

[soozieqtips]

Hmmm... I looked at the SA prisons last year and it seemed to me that they mirror those of Latin America, like Peru and Brasil. Not good at all. Basic like a prison should be when a life sentence is 25-35 years and then the murderer is set free.

OP reminds me of Joran Van Der Sloot, currently in a max security prison in Peru. He was a celebrity but now he is just another convict serving his time in a deplorable prison, the only luxury is the food and things that people bring. There are lots of convicts in these prisons who have a similar disability to OP. there is a huge prison right there in Pretoria, so his family will bring him treats frequently I'm sure.

BBM - ah, thanks. Okay, so he won't be 'special' if he goes to prison, and it will be basic, like a prison should be. I just looked for 'visiting hours' but couldn't find anything. I wonder if all this show of emotion is partly designed to show he wouldn't survive in prison. If so, I assume the Judge would see past it.

 

[MeeBee]

Regarding the broken window. Nel spent a lot of time getting evidence of that put on the record. So OP can say he had a replacement gift wrapped in birthday party paper in the house but Nel doesn't seem to believe that. We will see.

BTW. Does OP have a new set of bedroom doors sitting around waiting to replace the bashed in, barged through bedroom doors upstairs too?

Nel thought it was relevant because Nel wanted to mislead and create the wrong impression in people's minds. And look how well it worked!

 

[lisasalinger]

Morning, peeps.

Yesterday I posted that June Steenkamp would be on the Today Show today and I now realize that the commercial I saw was an old one... I was watching a recorded program at the time.

Total blonde moment, my apologies

They did do a recap of today's testimony and sure enough, the only thing that was mentioned was how Oscar was so mournful on the stand and how his disability sets him apart... Not a word about the pathologist or Nel's cross-exam. Why am I not surprised at all. Reporting at its finest.

I'm off to watch the rest of the testimony from this morning and make my blog notes.

 

[04009margaret]

Well he couldn't very well say that she knocked him off his feet. I would think that "took my breath away" or something along those lines would have worked better since Reeva was OP's "beloved", or so he would have us believe.

MOO

Another cricket analogy. Bowled over lol. OP & this case is starting to revolve around cricket, we have the bat, the window & now bowled over.

 

[TorisMom003]

It's there to draw your own conclusions from certainly. If Nel thinks it's of any significance, he'll mention it.

In the grand scheme of things how does it even benefit a burglar? It's not even a valid security problem. A burglar can't exactly climb through it, unless he's got some unusual powers to make his body like a snake. It'd be as easy to try and get in through the letterbox.

A person that is worried about intruders breaking into their home is not likely to have a broken window left unreplaced for more than one day, IMO. Especially a window on the ground floor. An already broken window is much easier to get into than a window on a second floor that has nothing under it to climb onto, unless of course the intruder is Spiderman.

A broken ground floor window, balcony sliding doors left open, ladder left on the ground under/near said open doors, NO security bars across any windows, panic button unused, telling security when they call "everything is fine".........that does not add up to someone being afraid of an intruder coming into their home.

MOO

 

[Hope for justice]

Well he couldn't very well say that she knocked him off his feet. I would think that "took my breath away" or something along those lines would have worked better since Reeva was OP's "beloved", or so he would have us believe.

MOO

He, took Reeva's breath away, comes to mind. Literally.
If the selected words had been smitten, it could be perceived as obsessed.
Bowled over seems less intense than some other choices. Would be interesting to know why that phrase was chosen.

imo

 

[DebinGA]

Well he couldn't very well say that she knocked him off his feet. I would think that "took my breath away" or something along those lines would have worked better since Reeva was OP's "beloved", or so he would have us believe.

MOO

Yes. I think of "bowled me over" meaning knocked me down, as in a crowd on Black Friday rushing the doors at ToysRUs at 5 a.m. Immediate thought is a physical encounter, which is very odd imo.

 

[steveml]

During trial this morning, were Reeva's wounds on her back shown?

Those querying Oscar's possibility of having been coached: Barry Bateman said he guaranteed he'd been coached very thoroughly indeed.

The instability on stumps, claimed by Oscar: is that to account for the position of bullet holes in door (he was wobbly) or to account for him shooting immediately in the 1st place? Even though he'd just lugged fans in and approached a potential intruder in a wobbly, imbalanced state?? I couldn't fathom that claim.

Hi,

Indeed, he'll have been given hours and hours of coaching. It's quite normal for a huge televised case like this.

I remember litigator Robert Shapiro mentioning this, although he did say that no amount of coaching can fully prepare you for the sheer enormity of pressure once you get on the stand.

 

[TorisMom003]

Nel thought it was relevant because Nel wanted to mislead and create the wrong impression in people's minds. And look how well it worked!

Unless one is a mind reader then one can not know exactly why Nel brought that up. One could also say that it points to OP NOT being worried about intruders breaking into his home and that he felt safe enough to have the broken window fixed at some later date.

MOO

 

[Gbtaketwo]

He said he took off his jeans/trousers and legs in two ways:
1) Removed both as a set, just slipped out of his pants leaving the pants and prosthetics paired together. Makes sense if he intended to wear the same pants in the morning to get a cup of coffee.
2) Remove them both separately and place the pants on top of the prosthetics.

I'm leaning toward option #2 that evening because the pants were apparently thrown across the room as he grabbed for his legs. And they were most likely on the right side of the bed. IMO. This right side left side thing does't bother me really, but his saying he was on the left side has no advantage to his story that I can see, but there is one or he would not say that.

Well if it turns out there isn't a reason then he has been very badly advised when preparing his statement because having Reeva at the left side of the bed and being further away from him when he was on the balcony would have made his version a little more plausible. Just like not mentioning the ladders at all might have made it more believable .
If you look at the crime scene photos you can see his T shirt throw at the end of the right side of the bed and his trousers nearer the side table .
I wonder if he may still have been dressed ( Reeva was ) and took them off after he shot Reeva but before he carried her downstairs ? Does anyone know if there was any gun shot residue on the shorts he was wearing when he lifted her down stairs because that would prove that one way or the other ?

 

[Gryffindor]

God just seen Reeva's wound in her back :-( That was no magazine rack.

 

[lisasalinger]

During trial this morning, were Reeva's wounds on her back shown?

Those querying Oscar's possibility of having been coached: Barry Bateman said he guaranteed he'd been coached very thoroughly indeed.

The instability on stumps, claimed by Oscar: is that to account for the position of bullet holes in door (he was wobbly) or to account for him shooting immediately in the 1st place? Even though he'd just lugged fans in and approached a potential intruder in a wobbly, imbalanced state?? I couldn't fathom that claim.

Yes, wounds on her back, front and the bullet hole on her hip. They were tight pictures, meaning you could only see the immediate wound not a full body shot.

They did unfortunately flash a picture of her head on the screen which I did see. It was partially covered by Van Aardt's head. I always get butterflies in my stomach (not the good ones obviously!) the first time injuries are shown. Very sad.

 

[katydid23]

Agreed. :seeya: US citizen here. I've never heard that it's considered rude to comment that a specific urban area is high in crime when the statistics back it up. Crime is committed by all races and nationalities, and specifying a place is 'urban' is simply specifying it is of or pertaining to the city, not a suburb, and not rural.

Here is an example to what I was referring to:

http://www.henryagiroux.com/online_articles/racism_and_aesthetic.htm




Cinema and the Culture of Violence
American cinema has increasingly provided a site of convergence for depicting both the inner city "reality" of black-on-black youth violence and for promoting a renewed "acceptability and/or tolerance of straightforward racist doctrine." Recent films focusing on black urban violence such as Boys N the Hood(1991), Juice (1992), Menace II Society(1993), Sugar Hill(1994), and Fresh(1994) have attracted national media coverage because they do not simply represent contemporary urban realities but also reinforce the popular perception that everyday black urban life and violent crime mutually define each other. Cinema appears to be providing a new language and aesthetic in which the city becomes the central site for social disorder and violence, and black youth in particular, become agents of crime, pathology, and moral decay.

 

[Viper]

Unless one is a mind reader then one can not know exactly why Nel brought that up. One could also say that it points to OP NOT being worried about intruders breaking into his home and that he felt safe enough to have the broken window fixed at some later date.

MOO

I'm still thinking air gun pellet on the night in question. :smile:

 

[04009margaret]

A person that is worried about intruders breaking into their home is not likely to have a broken window left unreplaced for more than one day, IMO. Especially a window on the ground floor. An already broken window is much easier to get into than a window on a second floor that has nothing under it to climb onto, unless of course the intruder is Spiderman.

A broken ground floor window, balcony sliding doors left open, ladder left on the ground under/near said open doors, NO security bars across any windows, panic button unused, telling security when they call "everything is fine".........that does not add up to someone being afraid of an intruder coming into their home.

MOO

LOL I chose to pass, some people just like to stir it up to get a reaction, I'm not biting. Obviously the point was about a state of mind, at least you got that lol.

 

[Cherwell]

OP reminds me of Joran Van Der Sloot, currently in a max security prison in Peru. He was a celebrity but now he is just another convict serving his time in a deplorable prison, the only luxury is the food and things that people bring.

I didn't realise he was a celebrity, I'd only heard of him because of the Holloway case.

 

[MeeBee]

Unless one is a mind reader then one can not know exactly why Nel brought that up. One could also say that it points to OP NOT being worried about intruders breaking into his home and that he felt safe enough to have the broken window fixed at some later date.

MOO

BBM: Yes, one could say that. But, I submit to you, that's not why Nel put that picture into evidence.

And, I guess we can change relevance of it from being murder-day damage (as people had been saying...) to evidence that OP must not have been THAT afraid of intruders. And I suppose you can make the stretch that because OP didn't seal up his house like a maximum security prison with bars on the windows and barbed wire and Rottweilers that he must not have been THAT paranoid. Or that he didn't get a broken window fixed the very same day it broke as further evidence. But it is, I say, a stretch.

I had said that Nel had put such photos up to put an idea in people's and the judges' heads. That's all it takes, one picture, and people can fill in the blanks for themselves. I'd speculated that he either didn't know if there was a reasonable explanation for them and put them up anyway or he didn't know and didn't bother to find out. But if Nel knew there was a window pane in the garage then he must have known there's a good chance it was for the broken window and that it wasn't related to the murder. That's just blatant.

 

[Viper]

I didn't realise he was a celebrity, I'd only heard of him because of the Holloway case.

Yes, that was his first celebrity. Then in Peru he murdered the daughter of one of the nation's sporting heros, I don't remember exactly but maybe a championship winning racing driver is her father.

Last I heard of Joran was that he married and has a child and he is addicted to drugs. He will be extradited to the US after his 28 year prison term is served in full.

 

[Cherwell]

double post, sorry

 

[Cherwell]

Nel thought it was relevant because Nel wanted to mislead and create the wrong impression in people's minds. And look how well it worked!

It doesn't matter what anybody thinks though, except for the judge and her assistants. And I'm sure they will see any nonsense for what it is.