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| Late Reena Steenkamp and Oscar Pistorius |
Masipa, the 66yr old judge, who has a history of sentencing men who kill their lovers to long prison terms, examined whether it was reasonable for Pistorius to fire four shots through his bathroom door at what he believed was an intruder.
“Clearly he did not subjectively foresee this as a possibility that he would kill the person behind the door - let alone the deceased - as he thought she was in the bedroom,” the judge said.
“The accused had reasonable time to reflect, to think and to conduct himself reasonably,” Masipa said. “On the facts of this case, I am not persuaded that a reasonable person with the accused’s disabilities (double amputee) in the same circumstances would have fired four shots into that small toilet cubicle.”
“All the accused had to do was pick up his cell phone to call security,” Masipa said of Pistorius’s reaction. She added that Pistorius could also have “run to the balcony” and called for help.
The judge also dismissed the angry texts prosecutors produced to show that Pistorius was a jealous lover.
“None of this proves anything,” she said. “Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable most of the time, while human beings are fickle.”
Prosecutors had put on the stand several witnesses who testified that they heard Steenkamp scream before she was killed.
Masipa dismissed that testimony as well, saying that some of those witnesses were “genuinely mistaken in what they heard,
as the chronology will show.”
Pistorius, the judge said, was a “very poor witness” who appeared “evasive” on the stand. But she also dismissed the evidence presented by many of the prosecution’s witnesses, and noted that the athlete’s poor performance on the stand doesn’t automatically make him guilty of murder.
“I am of the view that the accused acted too hastily and used excessive force,” Masipa said. “It is clear his conduct is negligent. And with that we will continue tomorrow.”
We are waiting to hear the verdict...Labels: oscar pistorius trial, update