We're had a fairly stultifying morning listening to Barry Roux's back and forth cross-examination about what Col Vermeulen did and didn't do to preserve the integrity of his case.
We've heard that he didn't "bother" to check whether the door had been kicked and that he didn't pay much attention to finding the pieces of the door that had been knocked out by the bat.
We've heard that police transported the door in a body bag, and that watches went missing from Pistorius' home.
While these are all concerning admissions, it strikes me that much of what we've seen is theatre - Mr Roux tying Col Vermeulen up in knots about details that aren't really relevant in a bid to show the judge that he's not on top of his game. We've been through a series of notes, reports and documents, examined the colonel's qualifications at length, but it's not that clear why any of this matters - it's merely confirmed what many people already knew, that the SAPS are sometimes found wanting a little when it comes to the precision of their work.
Col Vermeulen's central claim, that Pistorius hit the door with the cricket bat on his stumps, is hard to challenge factually and he is, more than Mr Roux and his lunchtime experiments hitting the door in court, the expert.
quickly popping in, sadly work interfering in my ability to follow the trial but if anyone is streaming live, and are able to, PLEASE take screen shots of crime scene pics if at all possible. Tia
Rebecca Davis ‏@becsplanb 1m
As much of a beating as police are taking in #Pistorius trial, who'd wanna be a cop in SA? Witness testifies he'd been on duty for 24 hours https://twitter.com/becsplanb
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