Durban -
There is a “significant” chance that Paralympian Oscar Pistorius could be found guilty of murdering someone he thought was an intruder - if not his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, according to lawyer William Booth.
Pistorius, who has been on trial for shooting Steenkamp in his home on Valentine’s Day last year, will hear on Thursday, when judgment is handed down, whether Judge Thokozile Masipa accepts his account of what led to his firing the shots.
He says he fired shots through a locked toilet door, not knowing the 29-year-old law graduate was in the cubicle and believing he had heard an intruder. The State alleges Pistorius intentionally shot Steenkamp following a fight.
Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club yesterday, Booth said the State had struggled to prove the murder was premeditated. It needed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Pistorius planned to kill Steenkamp.
The State had to charge him with this and a string of other previous offences to make its case stronger to prove he had a history of aggression.
The court could find him guilty of Steenkamp’s premeditated murder, culpable homicide or the murder of someone he believed was an intruder.
Booth said Judge Masipa would have to take into account what someone with the same physical disabilities as Pistorius’s, who feared crime and was in the same emotional state, would have done in the situation.
Answering a question, Booth said: “There is a quite significant risk that Oscar could be convicted of murdering (someone he thought was an) intruder because you don’t get a gun, go to the danger and shoot four shots. He could have fired a warning shot. Is that in fact acting in self-defence? Even if the court finds it is acceptable or honest, he’ll have a problem.”
Booth said there could be a lot of criticism of how the State and Pistorius’s defence handled the trial. If they’d had a pre-trial conference - for example, to clear undisputed facts - it could have been completed in less than a month.
The “massive” defence team had presented “poor” witnesses and spent long periods providing irrelevant evidence. Its attack on the contamination of forensic evidence, the long challenge of ballistic evidence and on a pathologist expert were insignificant, Booth said.
“The witnesses who need to be tackled were the neighbours because that was crucial to whether there was an argument and… premeditation, intention to kill Reeva.”
Pistorius could also be criticised for changing his defence during his testimony. At first, he had said he thought Steenkamp was an intruder, then that this was a mistake, and finally that he had acted involuntarily because of his state of mind.
Cape Times