My feeling is that the judge has got to rule according to the law rather than to instinct. She was very clear - in cases of circumstantial evidence, if there is another explanation for the evidence, it cannot be taken as fact the other way. A point in case is the phone - it might be that Reeva took the phone to the toilet in a panic. Unfortunately, it might also be that she took it to light the way. Because there is a second possibility, we can't say she grabbed her phone and ran and claim that it must be. Under law, the fact of there being two different explanations means that the evidence of the phone being present is not something that can be counted.
Equally, has the State proved beyond all reasonable doubt that he knew it was Reeva? Only if the screams were to be believed, and the timeline doesn't match up. She could not have screamed so vigorously after the first shot - it was simply not possible. Several people think they heard the woman scream after the only woman there had been dead for several minutes. She recognises that there will be some misunderstanding with 'blind' witnesses. Unfortunately, there was the possibility that they heard Oscar - that tied in with the timeline AND it tied in with the De Merwe evidence that she heard a woman, but her husband said it was definitely a man. There was doubt as to how it sounded there.
So we can all say that the evidence stacks up to make it look really likely that he killed her, but Masipa's hands are tied by law - 'really likely when it's all stacked up together' doesn't cut it. It must be 'beyond reasonable doubt' and in this case, it isn't.
What depresses me isn't so much that she seems wrong as it is that the law, occasionally, is an ass.
The law appears to state that if you kill someone,and there was no chance for them to escape, and there were no other witnesses, you'll basically get away with it because nobody will be able to prove otherwise.