Judge in Oscar Pistorius Case Says State Hasn’t Proved Premeditated Murder
Source: New York Times
PRETORIA, South Africa After months of hearings, the judge in the murder trial of Oscar Pistorius said on Thursday that there were not enough facts for him to be found guilty of premeditated murder, the most serious charge facing the double amputee track star.
The judge, Thokozile Matilda Masipa, also found that Mr. Pistorius could not be found guilty of a lesser form of murder in the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, when he shot and killed her in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013. Sitting in a woooden dock, Mr. Pistorius sobbed as the judge spoke.
In a lengthy recitation of the facts, Judge Masipa said that Mr. Pistorius had acted unlawfully, but did not immediately disclose her ruling on the lesser charge of culpable homicide which would bring a lower sentence than murder charges she dismissed.
The judge said that Mr. Pistorius had been a very poor witness who had delivered evasive and inconsistent testimony under harsh cross-examination.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/12/world/africa/oscar-pistorius-south-africa-verdict.html?_r=0
Iamthetruth
(487 posts)I did not follow this too closely but from what I did see he looked pretty guilty.
passiveporcupine
(8,175 posts)NaturalHigh
(12,778 posts)I was just about to post this.
I wonder if he will get convicted of a lesser charge.
Boomer
(4,159 posts)Celebrities are untouchable.
"But her ruling did not amount to an acquittal. Shortly before she adjourned the hearing for lunch, she said there was also the charge of culpable homicide to consider the least serious offense, which offers the judge wide discretion in sentencing."
Culpable homicide is still a very serious offense. Despite Pistorius' not emerging as a sympathetic figure in the trial, from the little attention I have been paying it doesn't seem like he planned to kill Reeva (i.e. premeditated), even applying the legal standard that says the murder can be planned moments before it took place. Also the police really screwed up a few things in their case.
Personally I think there is a strong suggestion that he either was recklessly trying to frighten her out of anger and instead killed her, or behaved with wild recklessness due to extreme paranoia. You have to live here and experience the combination of violent machismo and extreme paranoia about crime that some parts of the white community are saturated with to really appreciate why the latter seems like a likely possibility. Only a year before Reeva's murder another guy with Oscar' cultural background fired a dozen shots into his daughter's body went she came home late from a party and he thought she was an intruder.
Judge Masipa comes across as a consummately professional and fair judge and I don't think his celebrity status is a factor. In fact if anything it might work against him. We don't have jury trials here so it's all up to her.
get the red out
(13,459 posts)It is very hard to know what the actual details are in a case in another country without some information about its culture. I was refraining from having a definite opinion in it due to that.
FarrenH
(768 posts)in this comment
"One more black person haunted the trial. When Pistorius claimed he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder, shooting four times, he was tapping into the paranoid imagination of suburban South Africa, the long-honed fear of an armed and dangerous black intruder, according to the crime novelist Margie Orford. "That fear of crime is a deeply racialised pathology in South Africa," she said. "What was very interesting to me was Pistorius's extremely experienced lawyer seemed to be caught with the idea that the imaginary intruder, that mythic danger, would excuse all behaviour."
Pistorius comes out of a socially conservative (Calvinist) white culture that is saturated with violent machismo, the very sizable sector of the white community that formed the bedrock of Apartheid (it really wasn't all of us, although it was a majority). Despite the fact that the residents of wealthy, gated communities here experience violent crime rates only slightly higher than similar rates in developed countries, and our shocking statistics are overwhelmingly the consequences of violence in poor neighborhoods, a popular mythology has evolved out of persistent fears of a black majority in that section of the white population that are bolstered by overall crime statistics, the vulnerability of white farmers in remote areas (a small group who do experience significantly higher crime) and a kind of global narrative that has emerged out of cross-pollination with other racists globally thanks to the Internet.
This last bit is interesting - there is a *really* paranoid minority of whites pushing the "white genocide" trope and even holding pitifully small rallies against it from time to time. The higher rates of violent crime against rural white farmers (who harbor many of the most unreconstructed and virulent racists in their midst and have often been flagged for brutal treatment of farmworkers) are proffered as "proof" that there is a conspiracy in which government is complicit (by commission or omission depending on who you speak to) to perpetuate slow-motion genocide against the "boers" (this has various meanings but in this sense connotes traditional Afrikaners)
What's interesting about it is that in form and content, it is simply a mutation of a "white genocide" trope that is common to racist nationalist groups in many countries - in the USA the mechanism of this purported genocide is mostly race-mixing, in the Scandinavian countries a combination of cultural conquest, race-mixing and violent crime/terrorism and so on, but they all frame it in a similar way and deploy similar tropes. And all you have to do is go to Stormfront and read threads where embittered and racist white South Africans, Americans and Swedes share their fears to understand why.
It appalls me. There is rising populism and a minority view in the black community that Mandela and other ANC leaders negotiated peace without adequate reparation, since we're an extraordinarily unequal society where whites are still massively privileged and exercise immense economic power, despite being only 9% of the population. But I'm continually reminded of just how extraordinarily forgiving the black community has been in the post-Apartheid years and how much commitment they've shown to the vision of a deracialized society.
The Guardian article I mentioned is worth a read:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/10/oscar-pistorius-trial-mirror-south-african-society?CMP=fb_gu
get the red out
(13,459 posts)Fear and conspiracy theories, now where have I heard that one before a resident of the US South? Hmmm. I will read the whole article.
jberryhill
(62,444 posts)Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)but this creep had a history of acting violently toward women.
MADem
(135,425 posts)he got away with murder.
And I do think celebrity status was a factor--this guy was Mister Olympics, and they can't have him rotting in jail.
Of course, the rich are different. They aren't held to the same standards.
FarrenH
(768 posts)It's just that living here, and knowing how many of my fellow white men practically have masturbatory fantasies about shooting intruders, the fear of whom leads to an unhealthy obsession with security that approaches delusional paranoia levels, I can't write off the strong possibility that Oscar was primed for thoughtless violence of the kind suggested and in an adrenaline-fueled moment of unreason when he did it. The obsession with guns that only became public knowledge because of this trial is one indicator.
erpowers
(9,350 posts)I am just shocked. I do not see how the judge could rule there was no proof of premeditated murder. It would have been easy for him to check to see if his girlfriend was still in bed. Yesterday, it was said that he walked to his bed and pulled his gun from under his bed, possibly on the side on which his girlfriend was sleeping. How is it that he could not have taken a second to check and see if his girlfriend was still in bed? I understand South Africa is said to be a dangerous place, but why was his first thought not that maybe his girlfriend had gone to the bathroom?
How does the judge say he was a bad witness because he gave "evasive and inconsistent testimony" and then say he was not guilty of premeditated murder? If it was not premeditated murder why would he need to lie and give "evasive and inconsistent testimony"?
Even if Oscar Pistorius is found guilty of the lesser charges I would be pissed if I were a member of Reeva Steenkamp's family. At most Pistorius will spend 15 years in prison for killing their family member.
reflection
(6,286 posts)Just terrible, ridiculous. Never would have imagined he'd walk from that charge. Then again IANAL.
smirkymonkey
(63,221 posts)So am I. And his self-pitying, over the top behavior during the trial was revolting and pathetic.
There is no such thing for justice for the rich, famous and athletically gifted.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)ellenrr
(3,864 posts)and an insult to her friends and relatives.
The wife of that football player (Rice) should take note.
lululu
(301 posts)Really, someone living with someone and they hear a noise in the bathroom in the middle of the night, their immediate reaction isn't to look at the other side of the bed?
bullwinkle428
(20,626 posts)famous athlete, you can literally get away with murder.
toby jo
(1,269 posts)The lesser charge is like our involuntary manslaughter charge, killing someone while driving drunk. I guess this one's going through the 'killing someone while angry' filter, with the extra ' white man killing' onus.
Hope the bastard gets something.
bigdarryl
(13,190 posts)hollowdweller
(4,229 posts)To me even if it WAS an intruder why would you shoot them thru a door unless they shot first at you? Why wouldn't you say you had a gun and hold them at bay while you called the police?
Aristus
(66,093 posts)It helps to be white.
In South Africa or the US. Doesn't matter...
former9thward
(31,802 posts)Or is she racist for whites also?
hughee99
(16,113 posts)B2G
(9,766 posts)Premeditation is very hard to prove.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)with the lesser charge...
It will be interesting to see what kind of sentence gets handed down...
SoCalMusicLover
(3,194 posts)And the judge has discretion as to how much time is under house arrest. So he could get a longer sentence, but be allowed to serve it from home.
Everything I read so far says that the pistorius camp is likely elated, that this was basically the best case scenario. He was never going to escape completely, but the charges they were most concerned with are now off the table.
It is also unlikely he'll be put in the general population in jail, and won't be subjected to the horrible conditions and danger therein.
Blue_Tires
(55,445 posts)If he was paranoid before, Pistorius might have to start sleeping with two guns under his pillow...
SoCalMusicLover
(3,194 posts)He's still the gun toting, self-centered prick he was before, only now he knows that he can get away with just about anything.
Much like Ron Goldman's family never did anything, I sincerely doubt Reeva's family will either. They are good people, and will suffer through this injustice unfortunately. I feel for them.
Reeva and all she stood for against domestic violence, were in vain. Nothing changes.
Helen Borg
(3,963 posts)Skittles
(152,964 posts)no matter what the outcome of the trial