Just in…
http://news.sky.com/story/1361213/prosecutors-to-appeal-oscar-pistorius-verdict
NPA MEDIA STATEMENT:
ANC Women’s League:
http://www.iol.co.za/news/crime-courts/ancwl-already-eyeing-oscar-appeal-1.1765021#.VE6Eu01JB9N
Professor James Grant on the hurdles that Nel will face:
http://criminallawza.net/2014/10/29/the-seekoie-hurdle/
More details to follow here as they become available…
#OscarTrial
Juror13 
So he may not have TRANSCENDED justice just yet.
Who will he get to look after him now as Roux finished the case with millions of rands outstanding. OP has no money and Arnold the uncle refuses to foot the bill.
Good luck using state legal aid in the appeals court, you may aswell try for confession and plea.
What may be worse than being convicted of murder after a case?
Being convicted of murder in a second expensive case. . . . .
That’s the thing about transcendence… it’s never constant, only constantly changing.
Let’s hope his ridiculous sentence transcends from 5 years to 25. That would make the scales of justice a little more even.
“…as Roux finished the case with millions of rands outstanding. OP has no money and Arnold the uncle refuses to foot the bill.’
‘Who will he get to look after him now”
The tabloids that said he bludgeoned her with a cricket bat and took anabolic steroids?
Only trouble is that will be another expensive battle hmm could be a bit of a catch-22 situation.
Perhaps he will need to use legal aid. Why did he have 5 lawyers and so many experts anyway, because if you think about it, only Wolmerans actually made any difference to his case. He could have handed the bail affidavit in and called the Standers and the Nhlengethwas and left it at that.
Perhaps also 1 psychologist to talk about depression and anxiety and some of the PTSD symptoms. Other than that, the rest of the case was not really very purposeful.
For example what was the point of trying to contradict Reeva’s stomach contents when it was always going to have a fall back that she might have got up on her own? That didn’t need a scientist.
I forgot Lin – they did need Lin. But he was last minute anyway.
They did not need to do cricket bat versus gunshots analysis because Dr. Stipp confused the two already, so we know as a fact those sounds could be muddled.
Motshuane woke up too late (probably), anaesthetist, Dixon, Van Zyl, Darmen, Vorster, plus the trip to Weskoppies, none of it was necessary.
So he did waste a lot of money tbh. FIVE lawyers, come on, could have been Roux + an assistant and that would have been adequate.
I suppose he could legitimately try to reclaim some money from the state for the superfluous female screams witnesses if that was just a complete error, as he had to pay for his legal team on those days as well?
More tears for OP tonight, this is devestating news. Cant see him surviving a retrial.
Justice must be done!
Anette Vergeer to be disciplined by the Dept of Social Welfare for testifying in OP case without approval of the department.
I just saw that and added it to my Updates post. I’m glad they are disciplining her! That whole display on the stand was troubling to say the least. The Defense certainly knows how to pick ’em.
Judge Masipa correctly rejected her evidence too.
Will Nel be the prosecutor again on this? Hope not..
Why do you say that?
I think Nel did well with the investigation he was given.
Masipa messed up not him.
To be fair there were errors in the state case as well as in the judgement.
Nel is preferred because his VIEWS are in line to the majority belief that Oscar is guilty of shooting RS, but it doesn’t necessarily mean all his THEORIES and METHODS was correct in their application!
There’s a bit more to rita’s comment than being on “team Oscar” or “team anti-Oscar”.
At least I would hope so!
This is the best news OP has no money Arnold can’t save his skin he is gonna be easily convicted of murder what it should have been. Cry yourself to sleep Oscar because your days inside prison are gonna get worse your own fault,.
Okay in OP’s own testimony coupled with the evidence of the four shots we have DE of the Person Behind Door, He had full visibility of the toilet door – could see that the handle wasn’t turning and hence the door wasn’t opening (light from outside), He decided not to give a warning shot because it might have ricocheted and killed him. According to him the window had slammed open and the toilet door had slammed closed and OP headed to the toilet to fire four shots. We know he pulled the trigger at Tasha restaurants – he denied it on the witness stand but pleaded guilty later.
An estimate of the duration of the shots can be made by the dynamics of Reeva standing up being shot in the hip and then falling and then having the a bullet hit her head. [Was the bullet to the head the last shot? If so that is rather odd – that he stopped shooting after hitting her head]
Okay so we have DE of the Person Behind the Door as a banker. Can we do better? Yes we can and we don’t need to bring in a womans scream.
So here are the bankers for Dolus Directus on Reeva.
a) For the door to lock – there would be a noise following the slamming of the door. Door slammed closed followed by a key turn of the lock. They will be separated in time. The door slammed when OP was halfway up that passageway (according to his testimony): he was listening as to what was going on … he HAD to have heard the door lock about a second after the door slammed – clearly separated in time. He also didn’t hear any toilet flush. Since he had to have heard the door lock that proves he is lying. But that is no big deal because OP had a track record of lying on the witness stand.
b) It is beyond reasonable doubt that OP would have heard or/and saw Reeva go to the toilet, He claims he woke up and Reeva was in bed next to him awake. OP claims Reeva told him “What’s Up can’t you sleep” despite OP being asleep for at least 5 and half hours or so. Then OP didn’t ask Reeva to bring the fans in & close the curtains – despite her being awake, being closest to the fans & window, and having two lower legs in good working order.
While he was moving round the bed he didn’t encounter Reeva going past him in the opposite direction – which is what she would have done if she got out of the bed from the other side. He brings the fans in and is looking at the blue light of the record player – with back to the bed. His back is to the bed so that he doesn’t see Reeva who would have had to go across the bed and get out of OP side of the bed. Unfortunately he would have seen the illumination of Reeva’s mobile phone as she navigated her way up the passageway to the toilet (as he had closed the curtain to make it all nice and dark for him to carry out the next steps). When Nel asked him that question OP said his back was turned against the passageway. Yet he had said his back was against the bed. His back was in two positions at the same time.
This is easily re- enacted – there is no way OP would not have seen or heard Reeva going past him not seen the light of the mobile phone as she navigated her way up the passageway.
There is no precedent for these turn of events. In the Siyabonga Mdunge case the husband woke up and the wife was already in the toilet. He assumed the wife was asleep and went out and shot the person in the toilet who was his wife. So in this case the man woke up and the wife was already in the toilet – so he didn’t see or hear his wife going to the toilet because he was asleep – only waking up when the wife was doing her business in the lavatory. Never has there been a situation where the person wakes up and has the wife or girlfriend next to him … and then later follows her to the toilet to kill her – well it has been done but that was murder.
So we have dolus directus of Reeva without need to resort to woman’s screams or arguments. It’s simple geometry and walking speed kinematics.
I won’t even charge the State a fee for using my irrefutable reasoning. There is no need to speculate its over. It’s up to OP to come up with something else.
Hmm seems a little brief to be the solution lol. I’m thinking you need a proper weighty tome of arguments at least twice as thick as Roux’s HoA lol. Might be beyond a reasonable doubt then. 🙂
The only thing that is beyond reasonable doubt is Man’s stupidity and the ability of Man to argue interminably. :).
Time to move on perhaps to address Mankind’s propensity for war and killing and the rise of double-speak to sanitise the business of death. Damnation and Apologies. I go all politically incorrect in my unguarded moments, where’s Rm 101 when you need it.
Yeah, now the trial has actually concluded the discussion on circumstantial evidence starts to remind me of this song:
“Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that’s turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!
Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!”
Ps TIMM here is something you may find interesting:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Fry_Richardson#Mathematical_analysis_of_war
Ah cheers. The dreadful Poisson distribution. It gets around a bit. lol
There were some pretty neat predictions linking economic patterns to the chance of outbreak of social unrest which were fitted to data in all the various regions of India and became quite a good predictor. I can’t remember the study but there clearly is more to it than just people being bolshie.
Sorry – I meant – dreaded. When it’s just a data fit, what gives the right to call it Poisson in nature? It’s fine if there is an identifiable process which is generating that curve type. Often not the case. Charlatans. lol 😉
I don’t think this appeal is a dead cert.
A. It first has to be agreed about that Masipa’s error was clear enough.
B. It then requires that the Supreme Court is willing to reconsider the Seekoei ruling of 1982 about the state only being allowed to appeal on the ORIGINAL charge acquittal (i.e. premed murder) so NOT Dolus eventualis.
C. They have case law for “mistaken” intruder/thief shootings with no sentence of any kind. Albeit these are all a single bullet.
D. If the panel’s model of “shooting at waist height” goes through then this is not a clear cut “eventualis”.
E. If the defense arguments about “panic” is reinstated then it is not a clear cut “eventualis”
F. If it goes through as a clear cut eventualis on the facts about his mind, then they still need to persuasively argue as to why it is not a PPD – otherwise dolus goes out the window anyway.
G. In the meantime, the defense team be saying; Oscar was evasive because he was under too much pressure; Nel was not fair; the media attention was not fair; the premeditated murder charge was not fair.
H. And if any of that succeeds for defense, bear in mind that: The SCA cannot be bullied no matter what the public mood is, if they don’t agree with the NPA, they will say so.
The state has numerous arguments of it’s own but the point is it is rather complicated.
In particular something for a Supreme Court to mull over perhaps: How acceptable is it to kill someone and then supply more than one contradictory explanation as to how and why it happened?
Regarding the last paragraph, it is a great point and let us hope they do give it a serious consideration. The Society owes it to the people that the system does not allow any innocent to be punished, so unless the guilt is established without any doubt, one should not be punished. Equally, individual citizens also owe it to the Society that having taken someone’s life, one should present a clear coherent explanation of why or under what circumstances he/she did so. In a normal situation, one could say that lying or presenting contradictory accounts does not imply guilt, but when it is common cause that a life has been taken by the accused, that logic does not cut ice any more.
On that count itself, forgetting all other evidence etc, OP should have been punished much more severely. Taking a life should not be treated as child’s play, like it has been done in this case by the judge and the assessors.
At the pre-sentencing hearing we learned that:
1. Oscar “respects” the judgement.
2. He accepts remorse “within his framework” (which is presumably the one with mistake shots “by chance” into a door)
3. And in the case of correctional services witnesses, it was related, repeatedly, and in spite of being told what the judgement said, that the shots were “unintentional”.
So no admission that the “mistake shots” evidence is false.
No one on the defense side formally said: “The panel got it right – he did indeed intend to fire the bullets at waist height across the door – that is what happened.”.
The reason is probably to avoid conceding the point that false oral evidence is no better than avoiding the stand altogether. The consequence of avoiding the stand altogether would be that the state of mind of the “reasonable man” was “imputed” to Oscar – with the inevitable consequence of “foresight of the possibility of death”.
So it’s in defense’ interest to not formally concede any admission of false evidence. What is more of a puzzle is why the panel acknowledged the false evidence but did not take the next logical step to impute to him the mindset of the reasonable man…
I think perhaps because it was not argued. Nel’s arguments were far from detailed enough in my view. Perhaps he should have taken consultations with a few of the legal expert trial pundits when preparing his heads in order to cover all the bases because the case was quite exceptional in terms of the amount of technical details.
I feel partly that the appeal is trying to do what probably should have been done already, in those heads, capitalizing on a couple of slips by Masipa. Error in persona however, that is totally justified because the matter was clearly argued in court so not really any excuses to get that wrong, if in fact she did – on my reading of it, it does look that way – seem to have got muddled into excepting a special case where an apparently “tragic outcome” is a defense against a mistake in identity, but that’s too wishy-washy of a principle, not the law anyway…
Sorry that was a bit of a ramble: In needs point by point precise arguments to make it all very clear.
But the bottom line is yes, there is a mechanism to make it impossible to give “contradictory accounts” in the case of a self-defense, or putative self-defense, plea.
However in the event the state brings a false theory of events complete with witnesses misinterpreting a person’s own cries as objective proof they were in the process of murdering a crying person, what then?
No wonder Masipa said it was a “difficult terrain”!
I personally blame the detective department big time! – followed by lack of DETAIL in the state heads – and then the panel far less so.
I think the outcome of the case is factually very “generous” to Oscar and hope for Reeva’s friends and wider community’s sake that some of the errors don’t result in exploited laws creating more danger for people.
For which reason an appeal to review ALL the thorny issues would be really useful.
It won’t make any difference to the identity of the person Oscar was firing at of course but 10 months definitely seems too lenient even absurdly lucky.
Surely there will be people sent to prison for a few years for e.g. stealing a bicycle and these people and their families will be filled with a sense of despair/injustice, so it doesn’t really work from that point of view.
If people lose faith in the law you lose the social fabric in the bargain.
I think the appeal should happen purely in order to publish proper clarifications about each of the follow issues:
– “dolus eventualis”
– firing into locked spaces
– “burden of evidence” with an admitted homicide
– line between attack and defense for PPD
– impact of a wrong state timeline on assessment of his “honesty”
– TV trial/open justice pros and cons
If at the end of that “purge of murky issues” it turns out Oscar gets exactly the same charge and sentence due to all the particularities of the case, that’s fine by me.
The analysis would be really interesting so I hope it goes ahead.
There are so many questions about this trial that will unfortunately/frustratingly remain unanswered.
The only hope we have is that the conviction is overturned to murder, and OP is offered a chance to reduce his sentence by elocuting.