Thursday 6 March 2014

Pistorius On Trial

I'm not familiar with courts here, let alone in South Africa, but even so, from the questioning so far Pistorius would appear have hired a comedian for a lawyer. His strategy to date has been to invoke wild counter theory to dismiss the evidence given by witnesses.

He said that the neighbours couldn't have heard screaming  because you couldn't have even heard it on the balcony. Now that seems straightforward. Either that is true or it isn't. Haven't heard any substantiation, so it appears to be his opinion. An assertion. And he wasn't there!

Then there is the 'you didn't hear gunshots you heard a cricket bat banging on the door, trying to break it down'. Now I'm sure the latter activity would be noisy, but I know a gun being fired is. I'm guessing that they at least heard the gunshots and maybe the bat too.

Best of all of course was his use of a plot line from a Simpson's story (as I saw reported on Guido Fawkes), that the screams were Oscar not Reeva, he just sounded like a girl.

I can't wait though to hear OP explain how he didn't know where his girlfriend was, but thought she was in bed. On hearing a noise, guessed it was burglars rather than the other person in the house and couldn't see whether she was in the bed or not because it was dark, but he was quite happy to pop out onto the balcony and get in two fans, without putting the light on.

Presumably burglars don't use balconies, or prefer toilets or something. Anyway, going with a gun to confront the evil person, 'to protect Reeva' he didn't even say anything to her, like 'stay there' or maybe, a wild guess here - just something I think other people might do- ask her to call the police. Or at the least the community guard.

Much is said about his 'paranoia' regarding burglars, though we don't know where this fear came from (other than he lives in South Africa, maybe that's enough?). He cites a previous occasion when he came home and thought there was a burglar, so went into combat crouch mode with his gun drawn, only to find it was the washing machine.

That he is a borderline nutter seems fairly evident, but he doesn't seem to have a record of calling the police about 'noises' or any of the other stuff you get with the paranoid. I guess we know why he didn't have a dog and he certainly isn't the sort of person you throw a surprise party for.

Maybe the defence lawyer just knows how thin is the evidence suggesting he didn't actually do it on purpose. Possibly what the French call a crime of passion, a heat of the moment thing but still deliberate. Maybe. Strange things turn out to be true sometimes, but still....

The best chance for the defence is the police. I bet we see the lawyer step up his game when any of them are on the stand and I bet his questioning will be about technical issues and procedural stuff. Because from what we have seen so far the police have not covered themselves in glory over this case and are highly likely to have done something which can have the trial halted.

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