Oscar Pistorius - Discussion Thread #69 *Appeal Verdict*

[Tortoise]

Yes, negligence....and?

Recklessness more like, if you're minded to consider his version as containing any truth.

 

[Interested Bystander]

BIB Can I imagine being so scared for my life that I might fire ? Yes I think so.

Well, I had marked you down as someone who would have done something more sensible and leave by the nearest door and call security which is exactly what OP should have done.

 

[Trotterly]

Well, I had marked you down as someone who would have done something more sensible and leave by the nearest door and call security which is exactly what OP should have done.

But that's why Masipa found for CH. We all know OP put himself in the bathroom but that's nothing to do with DE.

 

[Sherbert]

But that's why Masipa found for CH. We all know OP put himself in the bathroom but that's nothing to do with DE.

It damaged his claim to have been acting in PPD, which meant that PPD was no bar to DE.

 

[Sherbert]

Maybe we are just different in that my only priority on hearing an intruder inside my house, just in the next room would be my safety rather than ruminating on how they got in.

If a car is coming towards me on the wrong side of the road I'm concentrating on avoiding them rather than on how they came to be there. How about you?

But he didn't concentrate on avoiding the intruder. He went to the bathroom and pulled the trigger four times, obliterating the intruder.

 

[Sherbert]

View attachment 88234

"I took fright"

A timely reminder of Oscar's vunerability.

 

[Sherbert]

Yes, negligence....and?

Credibility?

 

[Marfa Lights]

Maybe we are just different in that my only priority on hearing an intruder inside my house, just in the next room would be my safety rather than ruminating on how they got in.

If a car is coming towards me on the wrong side of the road I'm concentrating on avoiding them rather than on how they came to be there. How about you?

Re: BIB-- well, then it sounds like you would have wisely avoided confronting an intruder head on as well.

Many years ago, we had just moved into a new house in an unfamiliar neighborhood and in the middle of the night, our cat knocked a large stereo speaker off a tall bookcase. I immediately assumed the noise was someone breaking down the front door and before I even had my eyes fully open I was out the window and onto the lower level roof-- if someone was coming in I was going OUT... and fast!

 

[Marfa Lights]

Yes, negligence....and?

Negligence for not checking to see where Reeva was, but murder for blowing away someone ("to wit, Reeva Steenkamp") behind a closed door when they had not threatened or attacked him.

 

[soozieqtips]

But he didn't concentrate on avoiding the intruder. He went to the bathroom and pulled the trigger four times, obliterating the intruder.

He's always struck me as aggressive and confrontational, not scared or vulnerable. He likes to get involved in fights, bully people, drive recklessly, handle guns without due care, the list goes on. How many truly vulnerable people behave in this way? He just played on it to get off a murder charge. Even more evidence of how shallow and devious he is.

 

[Marfa Lights]

He's always struck me as aggressive and confrontational, not scared or vulnerable. He likes to get involved in fights, bully people, drive recklessly, handle guns without due care, the list goes on. How many truly vulnerable people behave in this way? He just played on it to get off a murder charge. Even more evidence of how shallow and devious he is.

Spot on.

 

[LemonMousse]

BIB Can I imagine being so scared for my life that I might fire ? Yes I think so.

Yes, I can too.

If a masked man with a gun leapt out at me...I'd shoot.

If an unfamilar voice screamed that they were going to kill me....I'd shoot.

If I heard wood moving in the en suite toilet that I shared with my partner....not so much.

The murderer executed a human being in a toilet by shooting at them FOUR TIMES. I still find it utterly incredible that anyone, anyone at all, can be attempting to spin an inncocent explanation for this. What happened to respect for human life....for the woman who ended her young life with her head in a toilet bowl?

So Pistorius was scared? SO WHAT?

 

[Belgarion]

He's always struck me as aggressive and confrontational, not scared or vulnerable. He likes to get involved in fights, bully people, drive recklessly, handle guns without due care, the list goes on. How many truly vulnerable people behave in this way? He just played on it to get off a murder charge. Even more evidence of how shallow and devious he is.

Absolutely

I have always considered Pistorius not as a shrinking violet but as one of those small number of firearm users who have the desire to take the weapon to its ultimate design purpose, hence the reason he carried it all the time so as not to miss the ‘legal’ opportunity to shoot. Remember his shouts of delight at shooting ‘zombie brains’ and telling the world that he went into ‘full combo mode’ to hunt down what turned out to be the washing machine, the callous 'dispatching' of the dog with his gun and no doubt the shooting of big game on one of Uncle Arnies reserves.

Unfortunately for Reeva when his well-known temper got the better of him he was unable to control his natural instinct to use his beloved gun, not once but four times.

 

[Interested Bystander]

But that's why Masipa found for CH. We all know OP put himself in the bathroom but that's nothing to do with DE.

Sorry I was being facetious. I am incredibly sad that DE is being discussed at all. It is only on the menu in an attempt to ensure OP gets a prison sentence that punishes him for intentionally murdering Reeva. IMO he deserves at least a 15 year sentence but we all know it won't happen. He is an aggressive, selfish young man who feigned vulnerability whilst in court but before and during his trial went out on the town at night, got drunk, chased women, and caused fights. How you do not see through his lies astonishes me.

 

[jilly]

He's always struck me as aggressive and confrontational, not scared or vulnerable. He likes to get involved in fights, bully people, drive recklessly, handle guns without due care, the list goes on. How many truly vulnerable people behave in this way? He just played on it to get off a murder charge. Even more evidence of how shallow and devious he is.

I agree and before I go on, I truly believe, on that fateful nite, he went into that bathroom in 'shoot' to kill mode.

He's ALL that you describe, but underneath that facade, I think there might be alot of vulnerability, which he has covered up for years. Who wouldn't with that kind of disability? He's had to prove himself every step of the way, but, unfortunately, his method (as it appears to me) is that 'the best defense is an offense'.

He would have been better off falling on his sword right after he committed murder, but, he had been getting away with his tantrums and everything else all his life. He took the gamble and lost and now.........he's trying to get out of this because of his vulnerability, which is despicable and far too late, imo.

 

[Trotterly]

Yes, I can too.

If a masked man with a gun leapt out at me...I'd shoot.

If an unfamilar voice screamed that they were going to kill me....I'd shoot.

If I heard wood moving in the en suite toilet that I shared with my partner....not so much.

The murderer executed a human being in a toilet by shooting at them FOUR TIMES. I still find it utterly incredible that anyone, anyone at all, can be attempting to spin an inncocent explanation for this. What happened to respect for human life....for the woman who ended her young life with her head in a toilet bowl?

So Pistorius was scared? SO WHAT?

The so what is that I don't believe that you can genuinely fear for your life and entertain a murderous intent at the same time, directly or otherwise.

The fact is that Masipa found that he did fear for his life.

 

[Trotterly]

Sorry I was being facetious. I am incredibly sad that DE is being discussed at all. It is only on the menu in an attempt to ensure OP gets a prison sentence that punishes him for intentionally murdering Reeva. IMO he deserves at least a 15 year sentence but we all know it won't happen. He is an aggressive, selfish young man who feigned vulnerability whilst in court but before and during his trial went out on the town at night, got drunk, chased women, and caused fights. How you do not see through his lies astonishes me.

Obviously it is going to be difficult for supporters of premeditated murder to come to terms with the fact that the evidence for premeditation has been rejected and see DE in that light.

I would rather be guided by the evidence presented in court.

 

[Belgarion]

It is interesting to look through the judgements of the ConCourt since its inception in 1995

In that time there have been many leaves to appeal and appeals proper in respect of judgements of the SCA; some have been successful, some have been dismissed.

These appeals have been very varied to include matters such as, validity of strike notices, awarding of damages, eviction orders, depriving of mineral and land rights, payment of compensation and awarding costs, anti-competitive conduct, etc, etc

However, interestingly there appears not one instance where the ConCourt has overturned an actual criminal conviction of the SCA.

The closest one gets to ‘criminality’ is a successful appeal against the right of the SCA to modify the length of an existing sentence which one can assume is why the SCA referred Pistorius back to the High Court for sentencing.

So one has to wonder with what enthusiasm the Concourt will embrace the Pistorius appeal which would seemingly ‘break new ground’ and furthermore evoke the anathema of some members of the judiciary, the setting of new precedents

 

[Sherbert]

The so what is that I don't believe that you can genuinely fear for your life and entertain a murderous intent at the same time, directly or otherwise.

The fact is that Masipa found that he did fear for his life.

I'm not sure that Masipa made an explicit finding that he was in fear for his life. I thought she found that the prosecution hadn't proved its case vis a vis Reeva, so it was reasonably possibly true that he had intended to shoot an intruder.

In any case, I think your argument would be much stronger, had OP not fired four times.

We know that OP's gun training means that he cannot successfully claim that he thought he was lawfully entitled to shoot.

Therefore, he must have had an intention to shoot unlawfully.

We know he had intention because Masipa found intention. We also know that he had intention to kill because that was the finding of the SCA.

You might argue that he shot out of panic in the heat of the moment. However, IMO, this could only explain one bullet, not four. Even if we ignore the fact that he chose to approach the intruder, and even if we ignore the closed door, four bullets crosses the line between defence and offence.

In fact, four bullets is quite possibly DD, not DE.

 

[Marfa Lights]

The so what is that I don't believe that you can genuinely fear for your life and entertain a murderous intent at the same time, directly or otherwise.

The fact is that Masipa found that he did fear for his life.

Okay, the intruder story was held to be reasonably possibly true. That much has to be accepted as plausible. Hearing a window open is reason enough to assume someone might have entered your house. So, fine... He's off to a start on legitimate self-defense. He was mistaken, of course, so it will have to be supposed self-defense or PPD.

It is, however, what follows from his erroneous assumption that gets Oscar convicted of murder. After he recovers from a brief moment in which he is frozen in fear, he then makes a conscious decision to arm himself and he takes up his weapon in search of the supposed intruder. Still fine and legal.

Here, however, his situation differs from most culpable homicides (and the court is entitled to consider the specific circumstances of each case.) Instead of assessing the threat (where he would have found none existed), Oscar immediately goes into "commando" mode or "Code Red", whatever he calls it, and goes on the offensive.

Without so much as seeing a silhouette, much less anyone attacking or even approaching him either with or without a weapon, Oscar makes the decision to kill the person before bothering to identify them.

The DT was very limited under these circumstances in trying to legitimize Oscar's actions-- the best they could come up with were the second and third "startles"-- the toilet door closing and the sound of wood moving.

Unfortunately for him, the court was unable to find hearing these quite normal noises sufficient rationale under those circumstances to justify the use of deadly force. Those noises could have, and should have, given him equal reason to ask "who's there?" "Reeva, is that you?"

There was NO REASONABLY POSSIBLY TRUE JUSTIFICATION FOR HIM TO BELIEVE HE WAS UNDER THREAT OF IMMINENT ATTACK. But he had a solution (his gun) and he was in search of a problem.

Sorry to explain this over and over, but I keep hoping it will eventually sink in, that just because it was held that Oscar might have had a legitimate fear for his life, the specific circumstances of his situation do not justify his murderous actions that followed from that mistaken belief.

Simply holding an erroneous belief that you are in fear for your life does not automatically excuse your actions that follow. Given the specific circumstances of the case, you can be held merely negligent or if you exceeded the bounds of legal self defense to a degree of reckless disregard, you may be held liable for intention to unlawfully kill.