Get the latest updates as Oscar Pistorius faces life in prison, with Judge Thokozile Masipa delivering her verdict following the athlete’s trial for murder.
LIVE VIDEO UPDATE 11:10am: The state failed to show direct intention, let alone pre-meditation. UPDATE 11:06am: JUDGE SAYS THE EVIDENCE RELATING TO THE FIRST CHARGE – GUILTY OF PREMEDITATED MURDER IS CIRCUMSTANTIAL – THE STATE HAS NOT PROVED THE COUNT. UPDATE 11:05am: Judges says that the onus is not on Pistorius to prove his story is true. Untruthfulness does not necessarily mean he is guilty. UPDATE 11:02am: Judges says that Pistorius’ story about why he did not call out or look for Reeva as “making no sense”, asks why did he shoot four times.
UPDATE 11:00am: Judge was not impressed with Pistorius blaming of his own counsel for inconsistent statements. UPDATE 10:57am: JUDGE CALLS PISTORIUS ‘A VERY POOR WITNESS’ UPDATE 10:56am: Judge is highlighting the difference between guilty of murder or culpable homicide
UPDATE 10:56am: Judge says that Pistorius had the intention to shoot but that does not mean he had the intention to kill. UPDATE 10:56am: Judge accepts that Pistorius is a fight rather than flight character.
UPDATE 10:53am: Judge says it would be ‘absurd’ to suggest that Pistorius might have used the gun to knock an intruder on his head as he could have used a cricket bat for that.
UPDATE 10:50am: Judge says that Pistorius’ evidence in regards to why he shot at the door was “contradictory.”
UPDATE 10:48am: Judge dismisses claims from the defence that Pistorius may not have had control over his actions when he shot at the door. Says he had no lapse of memory at critical moments.
UPDATE 10:43am: Judge going through the “plethora of defences” in regards to the shooting.
UPDATE 10:40am: We are back underway.
UPDATE 10:00am: Judge calls an adjournment for 30 minutes. She has dismissed a lot of evidence in the first two hours and most of it helps the defence’s case but her last statement raises some questions. Tense scenes in the court. UPDATE 09:58am: Judge says the area where Pistorius shot is inconsistent with somebody who ‘wasn’t thinking’ as Pistorius claims. UPDATE 09:54am: Judge now going through Pistorius’ evidence in regards to the actual shooting. UPDATE 09:49am: Judge says evidence regarding food particles in Reeva’s stomach was ‘inconclusive.’ UPDATE 09:47am: Judge says WhatsApp messages presented by the state that they showed Pistorius was a dominated boyfriend ‘don’t prove anything’. They have been thrown out as evident.
UPDATE 09:44am: Judge says there is a number of reasons why Reeva could have had her phone in the toilet – including using it as a light – says the reason is ‘pure speculation.’
UPDATE 09:41am: Back in session, the judge going back to why some witness statements cannot be considered reliable as they contradict other evidence. UPDATE 09:30am: Judge takes a break.
UPDATE 09:20am: Judge moves onto technological evidence which she claims can be considered much more reliable.
UPDATE 09:18am: Judge suspects witnesses were influenced by the intense media coverage the case.
UPDATE 09:16am: Judge says defence’s claims that Pistorius’ screamed after shooting ‘makes sense.’ UPDATE 09:13am: Judge says that given her injuries, it is very unlikely Steenkamp could have screamed in the manner that the witnesses claimed. UPDATE 09:10am: The judge also questions whether the witnesses who said they heard a woman’s screams could be sure they heard what they said they did.
UPDATE 09:04am: Masipa appears to accept that some of the witness who thought they heard shots, might have heard the cricket bat breaking down the door. UPDATE 09:00am: Masipa is moving on to whether the shooting was premeditated. She says regarding some of the evidence heard during the trial that “these issues pale into significance when one has regard to the rest of the evidence.”
UPDATE 8:51am: The judge is now going into the testimony from witnesses regarding the shooting.
UPDATE 8:46am: Judge Masipa outlining Oscar Pistorius’ version of events. UPDATE 8:30am: Judge Masipa begins her verdict by giving basic details of the case and the charges.
JUDGE’S OPTIONS Guilty of premeditated murder: Mandatory life imprisonment sentence, with a minimum term of 25 years before the convict is eligible for parole Guilty of murder: Considerable discretion ranging from suspended to life. Guilty of culpable homicide (manslaughter): Maximum prison term is 15 years. Acquitted: Pistorius walks free. Other charges: Pistorius also faces two firearms charges away from the Steenkamp incident. Both charges carry a maximum five-year prison sentence. – –
Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee who became one of the biggest names in world athletics, faced justice on Thursday as a South African judge started her verdict in his murder trial, a decision that could put him behind bars for 25 years. In a fitting reminder of how South Africa has changed in the 20 years since apartheid, the fate of Pistorius, a wealthy white man from privileged roots, rests in the hands of a 66-year-old black woman from Soweto, Judge Thokozile Masipa.
The track star arrived at the courthouse in the heart of the capital at 0700 GMT in a dark suit and white shirt. He was surrounded by a ring of bodyguards and police who escorted him through a scrum of reporters and television cameras. He made no comment. As Masipa began her methodical review of the 41-day trial and the charges – murder and three lesser, unrelated firearms offences – a pained and forlorn Pistorius bowed his head in the dock, tears welling up in his eyes. Masipa, only the second black woman to rise to the bench in South Africa, has remained impassive throughout the often dramatic and gruesome court proceedings, seemingly impervious to the global interest in a case that has drawn comparisons to the 1995 murder trial of American football star OJ Simpson.
A handful of Pistorius supporters gathered outside the court in solidarity with the Paralympic and Olympic track star, once revered as the embodiment of triumph over physical adversity. Even though it is now 18 months since he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, through a locked toilet door on Valentine’s Day 2013, his downfall remains a divisive issue among South Africans, with many accepting his version that he believed he was firing at an intruder. “I light a candle for him and the judge every night,” said Ria du Plessis, a 73-year dried meat shop owner from the outskirts of Johannesburg who carried a banner reading: “Oscar you were, you are, you will always be an inspiration, a hero.” Others took the opposite view. “Judgement day arrives. You reap what you sow,” one poster on the back of a motorbike read. Masipa has to review more than 4,000 pages of documents from the 41-day on-off trial, meaning her final verdict will probably be delayed until Friday. The outcomes for Pistorius are stark. If she sides with the state, which argues that he murdered Steenkamp in a fit of rage, he faces a mandatory life term – effectively 25 years behind bars before eligible for parole.
A conviction of murder with less explicit intent could still see him incarcerated for up to 20 years. Alternatively, Masipa could reject any notion of intent but still rule culpable homicide, equivalent to Britain’s manslaughter, for the reckless or negligent killing of Steenkamp, who was shot through a toilet door at Pistorius’s luxury Pretoria home. Or she could accept Pistorius’s assertion that he acted in ‘putative’ self-defence, firing four shots from a 9mm pistol through the door in the mistaken but genuine belief that an intruder was lurking behind it. Given the explicit curbs in South African law on the use of lethal force without a direct threat to life, legal analysts say the final option is the least likely. In one early blow to Pistorius, Masipa said defence allegations of police contamination of the crime scene “paled into insignificance”.
However, as she drew up a detailed timeline of the events based on phone records from Pistorius, neighbours and security guards at the housing complex, she questioned the reliability of state witnesses, including stating “some doubt” about a neighbour who testified to hearing screams of a woman. She also rejected a mass of instant messaging evidence presented by both prosecution and defence to suggest, respectively, that the couple’s relationship was on the rocks or loving and strong. “Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable most of the time, while human beings are fickle,” she said. “None of the evidence of a loving relationship, or a relationship turned sour, can assist this court.”
She then turned to crux of the case – the precise moment Pistorius fired into the door – analysing what she termed the “number of defences or apparent defences” presented by the 27-year-old for evidence of his intent to kill. She gave away few clues as to her thinking, except to say that there was some inconsistency about Pistorius’s account of what was going through his mind when he pulled the trigger. If convicted, sentencing is likely to be delayed to another hearing in a few weeks, during which time Pistorius can apply for bail. He would also be almost certain to appeal.
The case has gripped millions around the world who admired Pistorius, a man whose lower legs were amputated as a baby but who reached the semi-finals of the 400 metres at the London Olympics in 2012. That same year, Time magazine included him in its list of the world’s 100 most influential people, “the definition of global inspiration”. In sports-mad South Africa, the shooting caused an even bigger impact, the stunning downfall of a sporting hero feted by black and white alike in a society still divided by its racist past.
But as the trial unfolded that sentiment changed. The prosecution painted a picture of Pistorius as a gun-obsessed hot-head who handled a loaded pistol in a packed restaurant and whooped with joy when he blew apart a water-melon with a high-calibre pistol, likening the red mush to brains. With many glued to the live court broadcast, post-apartheid South Africa was forced to ask itself some uncomfortable questions, not least about male attitudes to violence and the reality of whites and blacks still inhabiting largely different worlds.
Why, commentators asked, of more than 30 witnesses called were only two – a security guard and police ballistics expert – black? Why, Masipa aside, were nearly all the leading protagonists white in a nation where whites are just 10 percent of the population? Was South Africa really so dangerous that Pistorius and his friends were justified in feeling the need to carry handguns? And, as backdrop to it all, the universal white suburban fear: how to protect yourself from an intruder – assumed to be black – in the middle of the night, a fear hardwired by years of apartheid propaganda about the ‘swart gevaar’ (black danger).
