Oscar
Pistorius was found not guilty of murder. Now whether you’re a proud South
African or a hill billy who checks in with the internet every now and then, you
have probably heard of the Paralympic winner who was on trial for murdering his
model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day in 2013. Well, if you
haven’t heard of any of this before that’s basically the story.
Oscar shot
and killed Reeva who he had been dating for less than six months. The story
goes something like this, Reeva was staying over at Oscar’s place, in the middle
of the night he gets up (she’s awake) he goes to bring the fans in (or
something like that) she quietly goes off to the bathroom to pee. He hears a
noise, grabs his gun approaches the door, whispering, loudly, for her to call
the police but never checking that she’s actually ok. He approaches the
bathroom door shouting at them to “Get the F*&$ out” (never mentioning that
he’s going to shoot) and then when he doesn’t hear a response, he shoots four
times. Some time passes and he realises Reeva could have been the one in the
bathroom and then he goes and puts his legs on and proceeds to try breaking
down the door by all means necessary, including but not limited to the use of
his cricket bat. He eventually breaks the door down and find it was in fact
Reeva who he had shot.
He calls
for help, people arrive, he’s arrested, he’s crying (which becomes a regular
thing) he says he thought she was a burglar the State says he intended to murder
her.
That’s the
facts folks, well slightly hairy facts but for the main part that is what happened.
So my
confession today, because it is Wednesday and I am linking up with Kat and Ian,
is that Judge Masipa got it wrong. While I respect her, she gave a full explanation
as to what dolus eventualis is (if A intends to kill B but kills C instead) he
is still guilty of intending to kill. Oscar clearly intended to kill the “intruder”
behind the door if we believe he didn’t actually want to kill his
girlfriend. She admitted in her judgment
that Oscar was a bad witness, he lies and yet she trusted his version.
The State’s
job was to prove that Oscar intended to kill. While they may have not had
enough evidence at their disposal to prove Reeva was the intended kill, despite
a number of inconsistencies in Oscar’s evidence, they did prove he intended to
kill.
However,
Judge Masipa did find him guilty of culpable homicide (manslaughter) which is
the negligent killing of a human being. He will be sentenced in October.
I could
write pages and pages about my opinion of the judgment but I won’t because
everyone has an opinion and this way, when I catch up with my lawyer friends
they won’t know my full on opinion.
Did you know anything about
this trial? Do you think he is guilty of murder?
