Oscar Pistorius trial part 3

[JillJ72]

Hiya,

Thread 1 here - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2022610-Oscar-Pistorius-trial

Thread 2 here - www.mumsnet.com/Talk/in_the_news/2049921-Oscar-Pistorius-trial-part-2

To continue our respectful, open, interesting discussion.

RE the objection made earlier...

did the judge say anything about it when the case restarted after lunch?
was Nel wrong?

why the HECK didn't he turn the light on?
His story sounds all the better (for him) being played out in the dark.
The light thing has been bothering me constantly since 14/2/2013.

Adjourning til tomorrow? It's the slowest trial ever .

I have to say though, if he was making it up, he could have said that he checked the whole house, and checked for a ladder at the window and then it dawned on him. Would have been a lot more plausible.

Unless he didn't think of that until just now...

But that would make his defence team pretty poor.

Maybe his testimony sounds implausible because it's true... because if he was constructing a lie, he could have constructed a better one than this.

I still think he's guilty, by the way, just trying to see it from the other side.

Adjourned. Again. Why?

Nel is absolutely right to pick like this. The whole thing is just ludicrously far-fetched. I honestly don't know what to think.

It always finishes at 3pm (their time). Mr Nel said that given that there was only 5 more minutes to go, there was no point in starting a new line of questioning as he would have to go over it again tomorrow and that would be 'unfair to the witness' (hah)

So Nel suggested they stop there.

I read somewhere that Nel is notorious for calling early tea breaks or adjournments. His reasoning for this one is that he is about to start on a whole new line of questioning and thinks it would be better to start fresh tomorrow.

Oh thanks Glad

It ends at 3pm local time, every day, I think.

I have to say though, if he was making it up, he could have said that he checked the whole house, and checked for a ladder at the window and then it dawned on him. Would have been a lot more plausible.

Arguing with myself here- I suppose the pathology or something could have given such a tight timeframe that OP couldn't have claimed to have checked the whole house before he went to bash down the toilet door. Perhaps that's why he hasnt thrown those extra bits in about checking the house, as there may not have been time on the pathology timescale.

Of course, the tight timeframe could also be because he knew full well it was Reeva in there, and once he realized he'd shot her fatally, he then bashed through the door immediately.

I think lies are very linear - this happened then that happened etc.

OP has had well over a year to know this night inside out and back to front. Yes he may be very distressed but he should also be answer questions about facts in his home/bedroom/life etc from every angle.

Whereas if he has been learning a script of lies this last year, it is much harder to response to questions out of order, back to front etc..

So those posters who think he's guilty, do you believe they woke up, had an argument that escalated, she locked herself in the loo because ex was going to get a gun, and then he shot her in the hip and then repositioned the aim to kill her when he heard her fall?
I'm just finding it hard to understand why that would happen in a short term relationship when he had so much to lose by killing someone.

Nice to see he still has the presence of mind to sign autographs on his way out of court

twitter.com/AlexCrawfordSky/status/455692274564079616/photo/1

He's always said he went back and Reeva wasn't in the bed, so it began to dawn on him that it could be Reeva in bathroom. He would look very unreliable if he said he checked a load of other things as well, at this stage.

why the HECK didn't he turn the light on?

I can kind of see it in a hurry of activity and high stress, and the possibility that there was actually an intruder, or even more than one intruder. If he thought there was someone in the bedroom, then he'd leave the light off.

But he says he was looking for his socks when he was putting his prosthetic on. In a pitch dark room.

And so much of this hinges on who he thought was in the toilet. If he still thought intruder, then the light (might) stay off. If he thought Reeva, then it could go on.

This is similar to why Nel is chasing on the 'checked the balcony' thing. He was out there either because he thought Reeva was in the toilet and he needed to shout for help, or because he thought an intruder was in the toilet and he needed to check for Reeva.

I suppose, a lot of this is hanging on the precise moment when Pistorias knew it was Reeva in the toilet.

I think this is why Nel is trying to pin it down.

Having said that, I'm now well back on the fence. I can imagine in that scenario, it wasn't a sudden lightbulb moment, but that he was wavering between 'it might be' and 'I hope it's not' and back again lots of times. That might explain why he's baffled by the questions (not in an understanding way, just in the way he can't pin an answer down).

Is that it over for today? What kind is lies has he been telling? Is it to do with the sequence of events or how he was feeling.

What springs to mind is the old adage that ' a liar needs a good memory' , OP doesn't seem to have this basic requirement .

That is grim, GladitsnotJustMe.

There does seem to be a small window in the toilet. I'm still confused as to who was sleeping on the balcony side of the bed.

Glad I think the bedroom door locked and the house alarm was on? So if Reeva had left the bedroom the alarm would have gone off.

Which begs the question, why not grab gun, get Reeva, both leave bedroom, trigger the alarm and get the estates private security to them very quickly to deal with 'intruders'?

Reeva was sleeping on the balcony side of the bed.

Stack I don't think they did deal with the objection, they really should follow up what they say there going to do.

I was reading a thread on here yesterday (an old one) about someone who was thinking of moving to SA. A poster replied that working days are different - earlier starts, earlier finishes (typically 4pm) due to the fact people like to be home before dark because of crime. Not sure if this is why court finishes at 3 everyday.

Nerf here's my theory.

I personally don't believe he necessarily intended to kill her.

My belief is that they had an argument - which may have happened elsewhere in the house. She may have run to the bedroom, locked the bedroom door (hence alarm was off) and started to get dressed (hence jeans were out).

On hearing OP bashing down the bedroom door (there is damage to this door as well as poss gunshot), RS ran to the bathroom and locked herself in there.

OP shouted "Get the fuck out of my house" - I do think it's significant that he broke down whilst saying this, as I think that was a true memory - and tried to break down the bathroom door with his cricket bat.

Then I think he shot at the door, possibly to shoot the lock off. Although todays evidence of a poss change of aim once he'd heard her fall suggests a more chilling intent.

I think his statement "If only she had spoken" (I'm paraphrasing) was also genuine - but referring to their argument through the bathroom door. Perhaps he was trying to get her to say something specific, perhaps she was refusing to talk to him at that point.

The reason he stopped at 4 bullets was that was the point that he realised that either a) he had accidentally shot her whilst intending to shoot off the lock or b) he had actually killed her whilst intending to do so.

Then he broke down the door, realised the full horror of what he had done, and we know the rest.

That's my theory. I may well be wrong.