...to feel terrible for Reeva Steenkamp's parents as once again her murderer Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to far less than the mandatory minimum?

[Proginoskes]

I've just watched the sentencing live. He was sentenced by the same judge who erred in the first case and caused it to be sent back for review. Supposedly the mandatory minimum for murder, the crime for which he was convicted, is fifteen years, however Judge Thokozile Masipa gave him...six. Six years for pumping four high-powered rounds through a bathroom door at a person whose identity he claimed not to know, a person who he knew had nowhere to hide from those rounds. To top it all off as Reeva Steenkamp's poor parents sat there they had to hear their daughter repeatedly referred to as "the deceased" without even the courtesy and dignity of her name.

I do hope there's a procedure for judicial recall in SA and this judge gets to go through it. So much blatant favouritism through both trials and sentencing phases, it makes me ill.

The conviction of murder doesn't relate to who he thought was in the bathroom so no, it's not reasonable to assume Oscar murdered his girlfriend deliberately on the strength of that verdict. The prosecution failed to make a compelling case for who he thought was in the bathroom. There will always be people who think that firing at an intruder in self-defence, even mistakenly, doesn't amount to an act of murder. Mistaken identity or not, it's tragic and I'm not going to bicker about it.

Would you all feel the same way about the prosecution if it was a burglar

So bloody irritating when people say this.

Look at the FACTS please. Swap Reeva for a burglar, keeping everything the same then you have a situation where a burglar hid in a toilet, locked the door and was then assassinated even though he showed no indication of being a threat other than the fact that he was there.

So yes, it would still be murder. As the appeal court stressed, who he thought was/wasn't there is utterly irrelevant. And they also made the point that this was no accident. He was intent on harming whoever happened to be in the toilet.

What if it had been a silly kid breaking into a famous person's house for a dare? How would you feel if there was a dead, unarmed 10 year old cowering in a locked toilet?

Pistorius' actions were no accident. He picked up the gun fully intending to use it regardless and when he heard a vague sound shot FOUR TIMES into a box.

Anyone trying to justify this is a fucking disgrace. Not to mention short of a few brain cells for believing the whole "intruder" bollocks in the first place. A woman was heard by four people screaming in terror (with a male voice shouting at the same time) in the moments before shots rang out. This evidence cannot, and should not, be thought away.

That poor woman died a terrible, terrible death....and for a significant number of people her snivelling, selfish, manipulative, lying boyfriend gets all the sympathy.

Sickening.

Gone

For fucks sake, clue yourself in.

His was not shooting in self defence...or even putative self defence.

Go read the SCA judgement and educate yourself. Yoyr defence of this murder is despicable enough but it's made considerably worse by your ignorance of the facts.

apricot you sound a bit of a git but regardless...
Sympathy is not like a cake where it has to be shared out. It's possible to have infinite sympathy for everyone involved in something like this. And I do.

In South Africa, you don't go around thinking an intruder in your home may be a child (?!). You think an intruder in your home is highly likely to kill you. That's a fact - how you respond to it is another matter of course.

You think it makes no difference who he thought was in there. Others disagree - and there seems an ambivalence on the part of the judge too. That's fine. That's why no one person gets to make all the decisions relating to justice.

I disagree strongly that if his story is true - and none of us can know that - there was no element of self-defence. I disagree with what you seem to be saying - that there is no difference between killing someone you think is in your home as intruder and a threat, and killing your girlfriend, who has a right to be there and poses no threat. I'm not going to stoop to your level or judge you for having that opinion and I'm certainly not going to change it based on your rant.

change my opinion, I should have said

Owl I'd rather be a "knobhead" than a gullible, murder apologist.

Gone I shall refrain from saying what you sound like because multiple people on multiple threads have already addressed that.

There was IN FACT no element of self-defence. Pistorius demonstrated that himself on the stand.

Putative private defence means that you take a deliberate intentional action under the genuine, but mistaken, belief that it was necessary to save your own life (or someone else's).

Pistorius claimed he "didn't mean to shoot", "didn't intentionally shoot" "shot before he knew it" "it was all an accident".

This is not self defence. Five extremely senior judges sitting at the appeal court agreed that a defence of PPD cannot be accepted given the facts of the case.

You don't know better than them.

I need to catch up when not on my phone. Cause on here this thread just looks like people throwing insults at one another!

To be clear....all of Pistorius' defences:

PPD - unnaceptable because he claimed it was an "accidental shooting".

Accident - no one can shoot FOUR TIMES by accident

Automatism (wasn't thinking straight) - impossible when he claims he was thinking enough not to shoot into the shower in case it hurt him

So, he was left with no defence and no justification for what he did. No one threatened him and nothing happened to make him think he needed to save his own life.

This is why he is a murderer. And to think that some dick thinks I'm the knob head for thinking that assassinating a human being who showed no indication if being a threat is a seriously, seriously bad thing to do.

"Ooooooo, but what if it was a burglar!" It wasn't. It was Reeva Steenkamp, ffs.

apricot we know what the verdict was and I am speaking about my own opinion which is not the only one of its kind. No, you're not dreadful for thinking this was an awful thing because it quite clearly was the wrong thing to do and had tragic consequences. I haven't come across anyone saying that Oscar isn't culpable and I wouldn't say it either. The way that you talk is sucky but that's up to you.

No, I don't know better than the lawyers and can understand that this was not self-defence in the classic sense. However the prosecution, IMO, failed utterly in creating a narrative to show the 'alternative' story and in the absence of that, Oscar's personal story suggests a very complex situation in which his state of mind was acutely agitated and he perceived that he was under threat.

I don't accept the assumptions about how coherently people think when acting instinctively. That said, it's clear that he made a decision to 'eradicate' the perceived threat at some level in the same spirit of self-preservation that prevented him harming himself. He now has to answer for that and seems willing to do so. Personally, I think it would be appropriate if there was a lower threshold for what constitutes self-defence for someone who is unable to run or defend themselves in any way. Having lived in South Africa, I'm not about to say that anyone who panics and shoots to kill when there is an intruder in the house is a cold-blooded murderer in the way that Oscar (possibly is) if he killed Reeva knowing who she was. You can and obviously do but I think people living on the edge of a violent death (as everyone in that country does) come to react differently.

Two things I have never understood is why Reeva had her phone with her in the loo and where on earth Pistorius thought she was when he was supposedly woken by the noise of an intruder. If I woke up in the middle of the night and my OH wasn't there I would assume he'd gone to the loo, which is where Reeva was. How did he explain this?

Have read numerous reports of the case but never seen either of these points explained. And yet they seem key to me. Having her phone on her in the middle of the night would suggest to me that she was ringing for help. These questions must have been answered. Does anyone better informed know them?

prawn:

This....doesn't explain that at all, but just shows how ludicrous OP's defence was

Agree with you - and no, I don't believe OP did explain them - he just blustered and cried any time anything was put to him that he couldn't answer.

I don't for a moment believe he thought he was murdering an intruder. I believe he shot his girlfriend to death as she hid in a locked bathroom in the heat of an argument. His story has never made an ounce of sense.
I'm sure some of his fans will tell me how wrong I am but they'll be wasting their time. He is an arrogant man with a vile temper and a history of misuse of weapons. Even if he didn't know it was Reeva he was murdering (and damn sure he did know), he knew he was firing four shots through a locked door and would kill the person on the other side. In fear of your life with every chance to escape you get your loved ones and you fucking run. You don't do what he says he did.
Six years is an insult. I hope the state appeal it. I hope he gets a sentence which fits the crime.

You don't have to be a 'fan' to see another possible narrative. Looking at the prosecution's story, their narrative made very little sense and the key points holding it together fell apart miserably - the cricket bat showing domestic violence, the absence of girlfriends saying he had been physically abusive, the illegal aggression-heightening drugs that turned out to be a harmless supplement, the triggering text message from Reeva's ex that turned out not to be there. Their story of someone effectively able bodied (wearing prosthetics) turning on his girlfriend as a result of drugs and jealousy about a text message disintegrated into a man who, although he never chooses to walk around without prosthetics, apparently chose to commit the most violent act of his life in a deliberately defenceless state.

Prawnofthepatriarchy
I thought the same but I can see, when he explains it, there is a potential story hanging together - whether it's true, I don't know. There was a loud fan on. He had realised they'd failed to secure the room when they went to sleep. He assumed Reeva was in bed because he hadn't heard her getting out of bed while his back was turned. When he heard noises from the bathroom, he was very frightened and told her to get down on the floor. All his attention was focused on the bathroom and it doesn't seem to have occurred to him that she wouldn't immediately hide while he investigated. Then he heard a noise confirming someone was definitely in the bathroom and went deeper into the misapprehension.

There is a psychological syndrome that can happen to pilots, can't remember what it's called, where the pilot makes an error and continues to make every decision on the back of that error as a result of disorientation and a narrowing of perspective under stress. It could have been something like that, I think.

I take my phone into the bathroom if I want to save a text without the light and beeps wakening my DH. I don't know why Reeva did it.

Gone

You can opine all you like that he was acting in self-defence - but that's a legal term and, in fact, he was not. You cannot accidentally act in self-defence. You are either under the impression that you need to take action to save yourself or you are not.

And it's not enough to say "Ooops, I thought there was a burglar" when you cannot actually show why you thought that AND why you decided that death to the "intruder" was your only way out.

He heard a noise. That's it. I am sure anyone would be scared hearing a noise at night - but virtually no one would head towards it intent on killing whoever happened to be there.

Because, to be very clear, that is what the SCA decided that he'd done - grabbed his gun and formed the intention to shoot while still in his bedroom (before hearing the door slam or "wood moving").

No way can you justify that by saying "He was scared and SA can be dangerous". No way.

And the State's case was considerably more coherent than the defence's. They at least led evidence for everything - the defence just trotted out ridiculous claims (like OP screaming like a woman) and didn't feel the need to support any of it.

Roux's timeline was a work of fiction from beginning to end. He relied on unverified times, made enormous assumptions and conflated several events.

Most shockingly - and tellingly - this "timeline" did not even accord with Pistorius's own version. So far from supporting Pistorius is actually highlights just how much lying he did on the stand.....so much so that he was contradicting his own defence.

I've said it before and I'll say it again.....how credible, seriously, is the notion that a murderer managed to make exactly the same sounds his victim would have made if she hadn't been unaccountantly struck dumb?

And how credible is it that four witnesses all mistook a single voice for two and a male voice for female. All four of them. At the same time.

Don't be ridiculous. He murdered Reeva. He knows it and 99% of the rest of the world knows it.

Oh....and I agree with what Roux said at the appeal hearing. How likely is it that OP just decided to murder an intruder in the middle of the night. Not very likely at all. That's because he didn't - he lost his shit and murdered his girlfriend like so very, very, very men do.

Prawn

Pistorius' story was that he spoke to Reeva while they were both in bed, got up to bring in the fans then heard a noise, grabbed his gun and from her side of the bed and then hobbled down the passage screaming like a woman. He forgot to look at or speak to Reeva properly because he was too busy playing Superman...his only thought to protect her.

She took her phone to the loo supposedly to light the way.

Read the link to see why his entire story is a crock of shit from beginning to end.

I disagree with you apricot and your aggressive tone makes you sound very prejudiced. Self defence quite rightly has a legal criteria but that doesn't mean that no actions falling beneath that threshold can have elements of self defence, or that the person holding the gun cannot percieve themselves being in great danger from an unprovoked aggressor. Ultimately the self defence criteria isn't met because Oscar's response was disproportionate to the point of irrationality; this doesn't mean that his mental state cannot be as he claimed. I didn't get the sense that he contradicted himself as much as he was attempting to explain actions that really had little rational basis except they appeared to him to be justified at that time, but in retrospect were without due cause.

If you have such respect for the court's decision, you will accept that the witnesses statements were found to be inconclusive. It would be difficult to prove Oscar's voice is high pitched 'enough' to be mistaken for a woman-how do you suggest they go about proving?

Your attempt to mock Oscar says a lot about you; it shouldn't be necessary to do that if your argument is sufficiently strong. Which it isn't -you're picking and choosing parts of the justice system you agree with. How would you suggest they prove that Oscar's voice is unusually high pitched?

As tragic as domestic violence is, how other men act and how you feel about it has no bearing the likelihood of your 'facts' being accurate and it is telling that you have steadily ignored the mistakes made by the prosecution and their ultimate failure to put forward a credible narrative. We don't ascribe motives to one woman because lots of other women are wicked, nor would we say 'she's guilty because everyone knows she's guilty so fuck off with your inconvenient observations about flaws in the prosecution's case'.

If you're going to talk about likelihood, it's highly unlikely that a man who has the choice of being disabled or not would choose to, as you would have it, beat someone up with a cricket bat and then shoot them while disabled.

That sounds like a job for which it would be helpful to be able bodied, as the prosecution first thought, and the prosecution was later left trying to find reasons why he would have chosen to be crippled for such an act (other than his stated reason of thinking there was simply no time to prepare before intruders entered the room).

Although we can't know what happened, the forensic evidence in key respects supports Oscar's account. The prosecution's account proved an impossible stretch that served to highlight the gaps in their own story. To find him guilty of murder, it's necessary to throw out the whole argument and make a judgement on the basis that someone died, full stop. Fine but let's acknowledge that the case for deliberately killing Reeva was not proved in court-as you pointed out, we are not superior to the legal system and I personally find indictment by public opinion in the absence of a successful supporting argument rather distasteful. All the court has shown is that he tragically killed a lovely young woman. We know nothing conclusively about why.

I personally think Oscar is culpable but there is a heck of a difference in the intent and context which ultimately was glossed over by the verdict and the judge's sentence reflected that ambiguity. Rightly, IMO, given the performance of the prosecution.

Ugh.!

Samad you are def on OP' team, as all you write about is aimed at excusing OP. Meanwhile the thread title was about Reeva' s parents. BUt you and OP have nothing to say about them .

I personally have spoken about them but the thread moved on, as they do.

I'm surprised you cannot see the difference between excusing someone of all culpability and and convicting them of the wrong thing (and it was one or the other - he either knew Reeva was there or he didn't and this is what the prosecution failed to establish). The irony is that it was trial by media, with many of the 'facts' so distorted that the guilty narrative will be out there forever despite the prosecution's failure.

I feel very, very sad for Reeva's parents especially if they have a sense of satisfaction denied at not seeing Oscar imprisoned for longer. In a sense, he's been handed a life sentence and they probably know this at some level if they have had any contact with him at all. I would want to see the justice system operating to give appropriate sentences based on the case before them rather than what would bring most satisfaction to relatives though.

Self defence quite rightly has a legal criteria but that doesn't mean that no actions falling beneath that threshold can have elements of self defence

I'm surprised you can't see the difference between "convicted of Murder" and "aw, poor Oscar" tbh, gone. Murder means there was intent to kill, regardless of who he thought was in the bathroom.

He is a murderer whether you believe his pack of lies version or not. And I don't, for the record. Not a word of it. It was absolutely not deemed self-defence in any sense - it was murder. That's what dolus eventualis means.

I would want to see the justice system operating to give appropriate sentences based on the case before them rather than what would bring most satisfaction to relatives though

I doubt you would feel like this if you had a DC murdered. And yes it was murder.

Reeva's family are hardly likely to be saying oh poor Oscar, he's suffered enough. They've been cruelly robbed of a beautiful daughter by a hot headed trigger happy man. They must rue the day she ever met him - such a short relationship that ended with her murder.

And the utter disgrace of him saying "Reeva wouldn't have wanted him to spend any more time in jail". The man's shameless. An utter disgrace

Reeva's family have shown absolute dignity during this showcase "Oscar Pistorius show" trial - and I salute them for that. Reeva's father's testimony was heartbreaking, and humble. They are good people, yet if you watch Twitter (as I do) - Oscar's fanclub attack them. Shame on them.

'Showcase' may be a bit unfair there - I mean that Oscar has made it into the "Oscar Pistorius show" not that the SA Justice system has.

If he intentionally killed her, his comment about what Reeva would have wanted is appalling. If he didn't, I think he meant that Reeva was a truly loving person and not vindictive, which is a compliment to her.