The Oscar Pistorius trial.

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I know the door could be instrumental as to whether or not he had his legs on and at what point. I completely understand why that's relevant. If the door was compromised by police folly, though, it seems it would have been better to skip it entirely, in my puny opinion.

But today was a bunch of wrangling over whether or not Reeva might have had a chance to scream between the shots and I don't understand that at all. Even if you could definitively prove that there was sufficient time for her to have been able to get a scream up through the lungs and out the mouth, you can't prove that she would have done so even if she could have. Some people can't make a sound when they're terrified.

From what I read, they want to toss in the idea that she might have screamed between one of the non-lethal shots and the last one that hit her in the head to say that Oscar would have been able to hear her and stop, if he wanted to.

That's a pretty flimsy hook right there. It does nothing to impugn his story. If he was in fear of an intruder, fear enough to have been firing a gun in the general direction of said intruder, a yelp from behind the locked door, if even audible after the deafening blast of the gun in his hand might not be the splash of cold water sufficient to derail his terror. That's just silly.

To me, the fact that she'd eaten after he said they'd gone to sleep and that she'd locked the toilet door when she didn't need to pee is very relevant. Does anyone lock the toilet door in the middle of the night when it's only the love of their life with them in the entire apartment?

I've got bad feeling about how this is going.
 
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GailD

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We've had a string of legal experts here talking about the trial (there's a channel on our satellite tv network that is devoted to the trial 24/7, would you believe?!!) and they are saying pretty much what MarkEsq said.

Everything hangs on whether Pistorius told the truth in the statement he gave to the police, and later at his bail hearing. The forensics are vitally important in establishing whether his version of events could have happened that way or not. I watch the re-broadcasts in the evening (I wouldn't get a stitch of work done during the day if I dared turn on the tv) and yes, the nitpicking about that mark on the door or this photo taken this way can be confusing, but it if the defense can throw doubt on the forensic handling of the crime scene, it will taint the State's case.

So far, imho, it's 50/50.

:)
 

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I do understand the bit with the door, but what possible difference could it make if they can hold the place for the idea that she may have had enough time to scream between the first and second shot? It sounds so pointless.
 
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Lady MacBeth

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To me, the fact that she'd eaten after he said they'd gone to sleep and that she'd locked the toilet door when she didn't need to pee is very relevant. Does anyone lock the toilet door in the middle of the night when it's only the love of their life with them in the entire apartment?

I've got bad feeling about how this is going.

I have to agree.
 

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I do understand the bit with the door, but what possible difference could it make if they can hold the place for the idea that she may have had enough time to scream between the first and second shot? It sounds so pointless.

Yeah, I don't know, honestly. Is the prosecution still going? I could look that up but... I guess maybe they are planning to present evidence that someone heard a scream, so now they're laying the groundwork for that evidence?

I need to go read more about it.
 

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The weird part is, the prosecution was supposed to have a long queue of witnesses still to come and then yesterday, he up and announces that he only has four or five more and he requested an unexpected recess --

The prosecutor in the Oscar Pistorius murder trial abruptly asked for a recess to "reexamine our case" today after presenting a grim bullet-by-bullet account of what happened when Pistorius fired through a bathroom door, killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

The case had been expected to last six weeks and the prosecutor had present the court with a list of 107 potential witnesses. But today prosecutor Gerrie Nel told the High Court in Pretoria that he was about to wrap up his case asked for a recess that would last until Monday.

"We have reached a junction in the trial where the state is wrapping up its evidence," Nel told the court. "We must look at what the defense version forces us to reexamine our case and our witnesses."

Nel told the court that he plans to call only four to five more witnesses.
 

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The NY Daily News has this to say about it, but that seems a stretch, and maybe an unnecessary one. I don't know how convincing it's ever going to be to try to pin down which one of them was screaming and if it was directly before the fatal shot or just after. That there was screaming and shooting is a given. Trying to untangle a very noisy timeline that's only four or five seconds long is going to be tricky.

That account Wednesday came from a ballistics expert, police Capt. Christian Mangena, and it appeared to blast a hole in Pistorius’ claim that he didn’t know Steenkamp was in the cubicle when he started shooting — and that she didn’t scream.
Sensing the potential damage to the South African sprinter’s case, defense attorney Barry Roux — in a somewhat heated cross-examination — tried to get Mangena to contradict himself and suggested Steenkamp was sitting on the toilet when she died.

<snip>

They put three witnesses on the stand who said they heard screaming before the fatal shots rang out on Valentine’s Day 2013.
Mangena testified that contrary to Team Pistorius’ claims, the first shot hit Steenkamp in the hip, not in the head.

The big question - really the only question in this avenue of information - is whether or not he had his legs on when shot and if it contradicts what he told police.
 

GailD

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I do understand the bit with the door, but what possible difference could it make if they can hold the place for the idea that she may have had enough time to scream between the first and second shot? It sounds so pointless.

I'm guessing that if she screamed after the first shot, Pistorius would have heard her and not fired the second shot - or maybe jerked the gun upward so as not to fire again through the door. But I'm just guessing at that.

The weird part is, the prosecution was supposed to have a long queue of witnesses still to come and then yesterday, he up and announces that he only has four or five more and he requested an unexpected recess --

I would love MarkEsq's opinion on this but I think the long list of witnesses is a kind of strategy designed to throw the defense off its stride. Under SA law - as with US law - the State is obliged to turn all its evidence, including the witness list, over to the defense as part of what is called 'discovery'.

With a witness list this long the defense has a heck of job interviewing all those people, or finding out exactly what it is they will be testifying about, in order to prepare for cross-examination. To make it more difficult, the State is not obliged to call all of those witnesses or to inform the defense of the order in which witnesses will be called. An attempt to keep the defense on the back foot, perhaps? Law of the Jumble?

As far as the prosecution calling for a recess is concerned, I think they may be in a bit of a panic. What I've noticed, as the trial has progressed, is that the State only tested the evidence as far as it proved their case. They did not test beyond that. The defense has implied that their (the defense's) forensic experts have tested the evidence far beyond that, and found gaping holes (pardon the pun) in the State's theory. Tomorrow (Friday) is a public holiday here, so I imagine that the State lab is a hive of activity as the boys and girls get out their crayons and go back to the proverbial drawing board.

You just gotta love it. :D
 

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I'm guessing that if she screamed after the first shot, Pistorius would have heard her and not fired the second shot - or maybe jerked the gun upward so as not to fire again through the door. But I'm just guessing at that.
That's looks like the point they're going for, which seems incredibly silly to me. If you fire a gun indoors without ear protection (assuming he didn't stop to pop in ear plugs after he strapped his legs into place) an immediate sound from behind a closed door may not even be audible. If he did hear it, it may not have registered through his panic in time to change his course in the split second he re-engaged his trigger finger. And even if he did take some sort of sober note of it, why would the intruder screaming inspire him to stop?

It just seems like an answer in search of a question.
 

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On that note, I used to target shoot at an indoor range with ear protection - always - and I was amazed at how loud it was.

It certainly gave some interesting insight into movies that depict shootouts in elevators and everyone speaking normally afterwards.

File under: not bloody likely.
 

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On that note, I used to target shoot at an indoor range with ear protection - always - and I was amazed at how loud it was.

It certainly gave some interesting insight into movies that depict shootouts in elevators and everyone speaking normally afterwards.

File under: not bloody likely.

That's a good point. The witness, who stated that he was in the car when OP fired off a shot through the sunroof, said that after that shot it felt as if his ears were bleeding.

And considering that those shots were fired in an enclosed space... surely a tiled bathroom must act like an echo chamber?
 

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That's looks like the point they're going for, which seems incredibly silly to me. If you fire a gun indoors without ear protection (assuming he didn't stop to pop in ear plugs after he strapped his legs into place) an immediate sound from behind a closed door may not even be audible. If he did hear it, it may not have registered through his panic in time to change his course in the split second he re-engaged his trigger finger. And even if he did take some sort of sober note of it, why would the intruder screaming inspire him to stop?

It just seems like an answer in search of a question.

I guess you could argue it this way: if she had screamed, Good Faith Pistorius would have recognized her, and not fired again. Because she somehow declined to scream, or was incapacitated, he had no idea that it was her or if anyone was still alive in there. Thus there was nothing to change his good-faith belief that it was an intruder. The same conditions applied to each shot.

I could see the extra shots being a problem for the defense: even if the judge accepts the first shot was a mistake, it might not have been fatal. This might be an attempt to neutralize them and focus around his state of mind the first time he pulled the trigger.

Did the defence try to spin the interval between the shots in any way? I'd expect if that were the idea they'd try to compress the timeline as much as possible. Make it one act, not several.
 

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I guess it's just one of those things that even if you could prove that Reeva screamed and Oscar kept shooting it wouldn't really be incongruent with his story. And it seems that only the things that don't fit with his statement are damning.

According to him, he was in a blind panic, and according to everyone those shots were fired from inside a tiled bathroom. The combination of those two factors would let him say whatever he liked about not hearing her or not realizing it was her.

I just don't see where it helps the prosecution's case and, I fear, if it doesn't help, it might hurt.
 

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Will Oscar be taking the stand at some point? If so, does the prosecution get the chance to cross-examine him?
 

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Will Oscar be taking the stand at some point? If so, does the prosecution get the chance to cross-examine him?

My understanding is that yes, he will be taking the stand and that will indeed allow the prosecution to cross-examine him. :)
 

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My understanding is that yes, he will be taking the stand and that will indeed allow the prosecution to cross-examine him. :)

That ought to be interesting. You have to wonder that if, in action, he'll come across as sincere or too clever by half?

I've only read up on the trial at this point, but his testimony I'd be interested to see for myself. Do we know if his part of the proceedings with be in English or Afrikaans?
 

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I know the door could be instrumental as to whether or not he had his legs on and at what point. I completely understand why that's relevant. If the door was compromised by police folly, though, it seems it would have been better to skip it entirely, in my puny opinion.

It could be considered tampering with the evidence, and thus, toss all info from the door out.

But today was a bunch of wrangling over whether or not Reeva might have had a chance to scream between the shots and I don't understand that at all. Even if you could definitively prove that there was sufficient time for her to have been able to get a scream up through the lungs and out the mouth, you can't prove that she would have done so even if she could have. Some people can't make a sound when they're terrified.

From what I read, they want to toss in the idea that she might have screamed between one of the non-lethal shots and the last one that hit her in the head to say that Oscar would have been able to hear her and stop, if he wanted to.

That's a pretty flimsy hook right there. It does nothing to impugn his story. If he was in fear of an intruder, fear enough to have been firing a gun in the general direction of said intruder, a yelp from behind the locked door, if even audible after the deafening blast of the gun in his hand might not be the splash of cold water sufficient to derail his terror. That's just silly.

Been shot before, in a kevlar vest. Even with that, screaming was definitely out of the question. Getting shot is a lot like getting hit in the chest with a bat. Your breath, if it's not knocked from you, will at the least force you to gasp for a couple of seconds.
Add in the fact that he was probably not wearing ear protection (had he been, that would have, in my non-professional opinion, made me lean toward premeditation), you fire in a room that size your ears are going to be ringing, and your hearing will be shot to shit. (No pun intended.)

To me, the fact that she'd eaten after he said they'd gone to sleep and that she'd locked the toilet door when she didn't need to pee is very relevant. Does anyone lock the toilet door in the middle of the night when it's only the love of their life with them in the entire apartment?

I've got bad feeling about how this is going.

My wife, sons, daughter, mother in law, hell, I know a lot of people who always lock the door when they go to the bathroom, regardless of WHY they went in there.
It's an ingrained habit and one that people don't break easily.
 

GailD

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GailD, I'm so confused by this. I just read a CNN article that says the trial will continue until May? How can they know for sure that it will take that long? Is this typical for a case like this? (Not that this is a typical case, by any means...)

http://www.cnn.com/2014/03/23/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-trial/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

I'm guessing, but I think that for a trial of this magnitude that is probably correct. Also, we have a whole lot of public holidays in between now and then. Court will go into its normal one-week recess on April 4th. Then we have a four day weekend for Easter, then April 28th is a public holiday here, as is May 1st - and then yet another public holiday on May 7th when SA goes to the polls for a general election. Available court days appear to be limited. (And last Friday, March 21st was also a public holiday!)

You can see why we're known for our productivity! <-- snarcasm. :D
 

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That ought to be interesting. You have to wonder that if, in action, he'll come across as sincere or too clever by half?

I've only read up on the trial at this point, but his testimony I'd be interested to see for myself. Do we know if his part of the proceedings with be in English or Afrikaans?

He will almost certainly testify in Afrikaans, which will be translated.

I'm just hoping it won't be the same lady they've been using lately. Her English accent is so bad that I doubt if overseas people can understand a word of it. I know the region she comes from but even so, it's easier for me to listen to the Afrikaans than try and follow what she's saying.

If you have difficulties with the translation, the live feed that comes in on twitter is pretty reliable. :)
 

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So, how was today's testimony dissected in the media? Reeva Steenkamp texting Oscar, saying that she was afraid of his temper three weeks before he shot her isn't good, but is it weighty evidence?
 

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So, how was today's testimony dissected in the media? Reeva Steenkamp texting Oscar, saying that she was afraid of his temper three weeks before he shot her isn't good, but is it weighty evidence?

Good question. What was she afraid of? Physical violence or his unpredictable moods?

I'm a bit confused. I seem to recall reading that two cell phones were found on the bathroom floor. Did one of them belong to the victim?
 
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