Trial Discussion weekend Thread #18

[Gbtaketwo]

Snowball effect indeed .
Have to jump out for lunch now but will be very interested if I can add anything extra to the list later when I get back .
It seems we all have very similar ideas of what a normal reasonable person would do in such a scenario.
Any singular point can be argued away but a long list is a very big big stretch of the imagination .

 

[Cherwell]

I don't think it's a solid point at all. If OP believed he was trying to stop an intruder, how is that less important than driving recklessly. The reckless driver of a car isn't attempting to avoid a potential situation in any way, he's intentionally creating it.

It's only a flippant remark if you believe the rowing/stalking/abuse scenario.

The point was simple. The car driver's actions may result in his own death as well as (or even instead of) that of the passenger. A person shooting at someone in a confined space runs no such risk. It was a poor analogy.

A "rowing/stalking/abuse scenario" has nothing to do with it.

I said the driver risks his own life and you say "how gallant of him"? Of course it was a flippant remark.

 

[Trooper]

he had also forgotten when he wrote out his bail aff, and his trial aff that on 2 occasions previously, when another woman was in his bed, he told HER he heard 'sounds in the bathroom.. TWICE..

he most certainly forgot to tell Roux that little detail. otherwise Roux would never, ever have allowed him to bung it in.

 

[steveml]

The point was simple. The car driver's actions may result in his own death as well as (or even instead of) that of the passenger. A person shooting at someone in a confined space runs no such risk. It was a poor analogy.

A "rowing/stalking/abuse scenario" has nothing to do with it.

I said the driver risks his own life and you say "how gallant of him"? Of course it was a flippant remark.

No it's not a poor analogy, by OP attempting to stop an intruder who is likely to be armed, how is he not risking his life

He isn't only if you think he stalked etc. and intended to kill Reeva, or if there was no chance an intruder would be armed. I stand by that.

We'll agree to disagree. I'm not going to bite :wink:

 

[wb180]

Another point of issue for me is that his reason for shooting into the door was his fear the thief will come out and he felt vulnerable as he didnt have his legs on. Problem he chose not to put his legs on and chose to go into the bathroom. So doesn't make sense to me. Ie I don't understand his fear which was the cause of all his actions.

 

[Trooper]

because he had 'heard sounds in the bathroom' before, at least twice as testified to. ( could be many other times ) . the concept that this time it filled him with overwhelming terror and horror just doesn't add up.. the subconscious mind doesn't work like that. .. those previous times, he checked things out, found nothing..

now the horror and terror stuff only erupts in the mind the first time.. the second time, the subconscious instantly rejects the unknown for the known. he had checked it out before, nothing doing.. so when he says all this , this is not applicable.. I am sure he was, at some stage of that night, overwhelmed with deep terror and horror, and I am pretty sure it was when he was 'battling' to get Reeva out of the toilet.. but it wasn't when he had just 'bought the fans in'... it wasn't a reaction to ' sounds in the bathroom'..

 

[BritsKate]

It seems we all have very similar ideas of what a normal reasonable person would do in such a scenario.
Any singular point can be argued away but a long list is a very big bid stretch of the imagination .

RSBBM

Which is why the defence, in my opinion, will have to challenge that a reasonable amputee can't be held to the same burden as any other reasonable person.

 

[Trooper]

RSBBM

Which is why the defence, in my opinion, will have to challenge that a reasonable amputee can't be held to the same burden as any other reasonable person.

what about people who are amputees above the knee?? or triple amputees?? they would be held to an even lesser standard... a lighter burden than Oscar..

 

[wb180]

RSBBM

Which is why the defence, in my opinion, will have to challenge that a reasonable amputee can't be held to the same burden as any other reasonable person.

Which is weird coz he should have put his legs if that makes him safer just like when he was getting the gun to make him feel safer.

 

[Trooper]

where would someone like Stephen Hawking level out at in the lighter burden stakes...

or.. Helen Keller, or .. ( this looks glib in print but I don't mean to be glib at all ) ..or Christopher Reeve??

 

[Mango33]

Hi. Just to add re the phone lark : Oscar had outperformed a jailbreak on his phone when he got it. For this very reason, regardless of content, non-content, it would require specific, hi tech software to access info ;-)

Actually OP and Reeva's phones were not jailbroken. They were just normal iphones.

Moller testified that HE had to jailbreak both of them to get the data out.

http://www.sabc.co.za/news/a/80200a...lyst-to-continue-testimony-in-Pistorius-trial

 

[BritsKate]

what about people who are amputees above the knee?? or triple amputees?? they would be held to an even lesser standard... a lighter burden than Oscar..

Using their logic, then yes. To my knowledge, there isn't a precident either. I could find only a handful of cases in which a defendant was physically disabled - and the few of those were handicapped during the commission of the crime they were charged with or subsequent outcomes - like one, awaiting trial, was paralyzed while fleeing the scene of a robbery. The car crash that caused his paralysis also caused the death of others.

Most of the crimes that pop up when googling are crimes against the disabled - truly an epidemic - but another subject for another forum.

 

[steveml]

Maybe the company doing the reenactment video told
Roux the initial tale wouldn't work, and OP "remembered" more to stretch the time he was going hither and fro on the balcony. Some of the many team psychologists may have even "regressed" him to the actual time the "unfortunate event" took place.

That will become clear during defense.

What has already been determined is that the reenactment of OP wearing his prosthesis didn't work when the state tried it out. As this was their initial claim.

I dread to think of the meltdown if OP had changed his initial statement from stumps to no-stumps. A fan and a word was bad enough.

It's fine for the PT to do that though, not a single query about that.

This is an example why we should never presume the prosecution are merely seeking the truth.They will on occasion actively pursue the result that they want.

 

[Trooper]

Using their logic, then yes. To my knowledge, there isn't a precident either. I could find only a handful of cases in which a defendant was physically disabled - and the few of those were handicapped during the commission of the crime they were charged with or subsequent outcomes - like one, awaiting trial, was paralyzed while fleeing the scene of a robbery. The car crash that caused his paralysis also caused the death of others.

Most of the crimes that pop up when googling are crimes against the disabled - truly an epidemic - but another subject for another forum.

I couldn't even find a category for it.. the only ones I recall , and those only recently , was a man who , after strangling his enemy, tried to fake the victim as a suicide by hanging.. the rope he used was faulty, it broke, the body fell on him making him a paraplegic.. it broke his neck.

the other one was a man who set fire on his wife , because she wouldn't come back to him. .. he threw petrol over her in a stairwell, the flames blew back on him, as well as her.. . he managed to survive but only a few weeks after he was convicted of murder..

 

[Trooper]

the only other one I recall was a bloke who was an accountant/fraudster.. he had one of the first hand replacement surgeries.. a hand of another person grafted. . . he went back to being a fraudster, though..

oddly enough.. once this hand was part of him , surgically. he didn't like the sensation and wanted it taken off .. I think he actually did have it removed..

 

[Trooper]

but he was tried for fraud as a person with two hands..


for some reason I suddenly cant type for helpless giggling..

 

[04009margaret]

Just saw Thomas Wolmaran's 3D ballistics animation of SA rapper Khuli Chana's car. Such a shame that the police don't have the same financial resources for there experts.

 

[Lyra500]

He has killed his girlfriend, of that there's no doubt, and trial by both media and judge is underway.

However, it's one thing reporting on a story that OP is a reckless *******, and another thing to leak information with the intention of planting the seed that he maliciously planned a murder.

I have not seen anything from any person or media outlet suggesting that OP sat down with a flip chart, stop watch and pen and planned out Reeva's murder. I really don't think that anybody has.

My use of the word pre-meditated in respect of this killing does not mean months of preparation, but a deliberate act.

Now I was trying to find some definitions regarding SA law and found a very interesting article which (for me at least) sets things out far more clearly than anything else I have found to date.

I think the difference around pre-meditation comes from a real difference in interpretation between some US states and the way things are viewed in SA. I would have gone with the US states (which is probably unprecedented in my lifetime!) in viewing the deliberate going and fetching of the gun as premeditation. It appears that in SA there has to be more deliberate planning for pre-meditated murder.

However, there are then some definitions of murder (as opposed to culpable homicide) near the end of the article, which seem more appropriate for OP. The classification of murder into pre-meditated, the three listed types of murder intent and culpable homicide will affect the length of sentence.

Anyway, some of you may like to have a read. The article starts off by describing the points made during an on air 'animated discussion' between two US attorneys about whether it could be pre-meditated murder or not.

http://www.politifact.com/punditfac...grace-talks-oscar-pistorious-trial-could-pre/

Some types of murder that would be considered premeditated in the U.S. would not be considered premeditated in South Africa, said Bob Dekle, a retired assistant state attorney who teaches the prosecution clinic at the University of Florida Levin College of Law.

In South Africa, murder is defined as the unlawful and intentional killing of another person. There are three different forms of intent that come into play when a judge is determining the length of a sentence. (Memorize the Latin terms like we did and you’ll seem super informed about this case.)

Dolus directus, or direct intent. It was your goal to kill someone.

Dolus eventualis, or knowing the possible result of your action will kill someone and recklessly going through with it anyway. It’s akin to second-degree murder, Dekle said.

Dolus indirectus, or indirect intent. When a person’s death is a substantially certain outcome of your action, such as committing arson and knowing factory workers will die as a result.

The judge could also decide the murder was not intentional and find Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide, or an unlawful negligent killing. In that scenario, Pistorius ought to have foreseen the result of shooting through a door but did not, or he should have known Steenkamp was in the bathroom when shooting through the door, said Marius du Toit, a criminal defense attorney in South Africa who is tracking the case. The court would determine how a reasonable person in Pistorius’ situation would have acted that night and compare it to what he did.

My view at this point would be that OP is guilty of murder rather than culpable homicide and that Dolus eventualis best fits the apparent circumstances.

I would hope that when considering whether culpable homicide is a suitable verdict, common sense wins through. That is after all the judgement which is supposed to be made:
'how would a reasonable person have reacted'?

So actually, when FMs have been criticised for picking holes in OP's two versions of what happened, they are in effect just doing what the judge and assessors will need to do - look at what OP did and decide if it was credible or reasonable.

 

[jay-jay]

Although it's not unbelievable jay-jay.

A reckless act is a reckless act. How many people have been killed in car crashes because their partners were driving recklessly?

The partner cannot claim to have been defending their passenger, they cannot claim they did it in the interest of anything else other than their own selfishness.

The outcome is a fatality exactly the same, yet somehow it doesn't fall into the same category as it was only a ton and a half of steel, petrol, oil and rubber, and not a gun.

I have to disagree with you that 'a reckless act is a reckless act'. In the case of reckless driving, in the majority of cases it does not end in the death of their partner .. it might do in some instances, but 9 out of 10 times it won't end in anyone's death and that's generally why they do it is because they know it probably won't (not that I am in any way supporting the kind of stupidness that can end up with someone being killed as a result).

In the case of OP, he went into that bathroom, armed with a gun which he knew was loaded with bullets designed to cause maximum possible injury and which would result in killing whoever they hit, and he shot blindly through a toilet door without having first checked to make 100% sure that it was not his girlfriend who was in there (if you believe the 'Oscar's Fairytale' version). So, in this kind of 'reckless act' which will 100% always end in the death of a person, you make damned sure it's not your girlfriend you are going to end up shooting.

 

[Viper]

we haven't really gone into the drugs/steroids.....that OP had.....pig something or another.....whatever were in those vials....a sexual enhancer? wth was that stuff???

I found it odd that the bag full of the drug and syringe were out in the open in the bedroom. Why? If it were "medicine" most would keep it stored out of sight in the bathroom, the kitchen, a drawer, or if he used it at the track in his gear bag. It's a small red flag.

The other red flags are the mess upstairs. iPads all over and under the side of the bed, one with its cover removed. Blood on both the inside and the outside of the watch box is very strange, probably did that on his trip upstairs while everyone watched. The duvet with blood on the inside and outside is also strange. The locked and loaded pistol in the bathroom is odd; if he were done shooting he would have at least released the trigger, and likely, out of habit, flipped the safety switch on. And placing his unused "work" phone with its cover removed and placed atop it, alongside Reeva's phone near the gun is just weird. Oh, just to be picky, his prized medals in the safe were in disarray, ribbons just stuffed in there; they would I think normally be stored in their presentation cases.