This article is from the source 'nytimes' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.

You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/world/africa/pistorius-team-to-begin-his-defense.html

The article has changed 9 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.

Version 6 Version 7
Pistorius Expresses Grief Over Shooting in First Day on Stand Apologetic and Sobbing, Pistorius Testifies He Killed His Girlfriend by Mistake
(about 5 hours later)
PRETORIA, South Africa — Tentative, shaking, his voice so low it was sometimes hard to hear him, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius on Monday took the stand in his own defense, testifying that he had shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, to death a year ago because of a tragic mistake. PRETORIA, South Africa — Tearful, tremulous, speaking so softly that he was nearly inaudible at times, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius took the stand in his murder trial on Monday, maintaining that he shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, last year because of a tragic mistake.
“There hasn’t been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven’t thought about your family,” he said, addressing Ms. Steenkamp’s relatives, who sat stony-faced in the courtroom. “I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the loss I caused your family.” He began with an apology to Ms. Steenkamp’s relatives, who sat grim and stone-faced in the courtroom here.
Mr. Pistorius, 27, who says he shot Ms. Steenkamp, 29, through a bathroom door in his house because he believed she was an intruder, faces a minimum of 25 years in prison if convicted of premeditated murder, the most serious of the charges the double-amputee athlete faces. “There hasn’t been a moment since this tragedy happened that I haven’t thought about your family,” Mr. Pistorius said, his voice shaking. Pausing as he tried to keep his composure, he went on, “I can’t imagine the pain and the sorrow and the loss I caused your family.”
“I want to start by apologizing to Reeva’s family,” he said, looking broken and shattered as he finally took the stand. “I was simply trying to protect Reeva.” Mr. Pistorius, 27, says he shot Ms. Steenkamp four times through a locked bathroom door in his house early in the morning of Feb. 14, 2013, because he believed that she was still in bed and that an intruder had broken in. He has yet to testify about exactly what happened — that account should come when he takes the stand again on Tuesday — but he did offer a rationale of sorts to the Steenkamps.
In his morning testimony, the first time he has spoken in his defense since the trial began in March, Mr. Pistorius gave a harrowing account of his state of mind since the shooting. He has been taking antidepressants and sleeping pills, he said, and has suffered from such bad nightmares — waking up terrified, with the smell of “all that blood” fresh in his memory each time — that, he said, he is afraid to go to sleep at all. “I was simply trying to protect Reeva,” he said.
One night it was so bad that he found himself sitting in a closet in his house. He telephoned his sister for help. Mr. Pistorius faces 25 years in prison if convicted on the most serious of the charges he faces, premeditated murder.
“I woke up and I was terrified and for some reason I couldn’t calm myself down, so I climbed into the cupboard and got my sister to come and sit by me for a while,” he said. Through gentle questioning of his shaky and seemingly fragile client, who has spent much of the trial with his head buried in his hands, crying and occasionally vomiting, Mr. Pistorius’s lawyer, Barry Roux, laid the groundwork for what is likely to be his case over the next few weeks.
The defense had called a pathologist, Jan Botha, as its first witness on Monday. He established, for instance, that in a country troubled by crime, Mr. Pistorius had often been affected by violent attacks, with family members and friends experiencing numerous break-ins and carjackings. He established that Mr. Pistorius’s mother had kept a gun under her bed, that Mr. Pistorius himself had been followed home and threatened, that criminals had broken into the houses of neighbors in his fenced-in, security-patrolled development in Pretoria, and that he had intervened twice during crimes — once when two men were attacking a woman, and once when several men were beating a taxi driver.
As Dr. Botha began his testimony by describing the contents of Ms. Steenkamp’s stomach, Mr. Pistorius held his head in his hands and placed his fingers in his ears. A court official placed a green bucket near him, apparently in case he needed to vomit, as happened earlier in the trial. All those things are meant to speak to Mr. Pistorius’s outlook: constantly mindful of crime, worried about intruders, and ready to go on the offensive at a sign of a threat.
Dr. Botha testified that a forensic technique used by the prosecution to establish the time of Ms. Steenkamp’s last meal was unreliable. Mr. Pistorius also testified about how, as a double amputee with prosthetic legs below both knees, he feels vulnerable and unsteady on his stumps, as he calls them. “I don’t have balance,” he said. “I have very limited mobility.” He keeps his prostheses by his bed when he goes to sleep, he explained, and puts them on as soon as he wakes up. The defense contends that Mr. Pistorius was not wearing his prostheses when he fired the shots at Ms. Steenkamp, perhaps adding to his feeling of panic that night.
The court was shown grisly photos of blood all over the bathroom, prompting Mr. Pistorius to try to block out the images and testimony. During a brief recess, he sobbed in the dock as his brother and sister tried to comfort him. Mr. Roux also led Mr. Pistorius through a discussion of his current state of mind: nervous, distracted, distraught, sleepless for days at a time.
The trial had been delayed for a week by the illness of a judicial assessor — one of two officials assisting Judge Thokozile Masipa. South Africa does not have jury trials, so it will be up to the judge to determine guilt or innocence. Since the shooting, Mr. Pistorius said, he has been taking various combinations of antidepressants and sleeping pills. “I have terrible nightmares about the things that happened that night,” he said, adding that he wakes up to the vivid smell of “all that blood.”
The prosecution has sought to present Mr. Pistorius as irascible, possessive and trigger-happy. Prosecution witnesses have testified that they heard screams and shots coming from his house in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013. “I wake up in a complete state of terror, to a point where I’d rather not sleep than fall asleep and wake up like that,” he said.
Throughout the trial so far, Mr. Pistorius has displayed a range of emotions in the courtroom as the prosecution sought to prove that he killed Ms. Steenkamp in a violent rage. He has sobbed, prayed, thrown up, buried his face in his hands and covered his ears in response to some of the testimony. But until Monday, he had not spoken in his own defense. Mr. Pistorius is free on bail, and he has been living on the estate of his uncle, a successful real estate developer. But he said he finds his nights excruciating, some more so than others, and he often telephones his sister for help.
On one occasion, “I woke up and I was terrified, and for some reason I couldn’t calm myself down, so I climbed into the cupboard,” he said, referring to the closet, “and got my sister to come and sit by me for a while.”
Mr. Pistorius, the world’s most famous disabled athlete, is considered a national hero in South Africa for his speed and grace competing against able-bodied athletes as well as other Paralympians. He and Ms. Steenkamp, a model, law graduate and aspiring reality television star, were fixtures in Johannesburg’s celebrity scene, and Mr. Pistorius spoke on Monday of his love for her.
“I was taken aback, bowled over by how much I felt for her,” he said, so much so that he decided early in 2013 to move to Johannesburg to be closer to her. Eager to sell his house in Pretoria, he hired a contractor to spruce it up and make repairs. The work included fixing a broken window that, on the night Ms. Steenkamp died, had a ladder propped outside it, in anticipation of the workmen’s arrival. The defense hopes that that fact, too, will go toward presenting a plausible case that Mr. Pistorius believed that someone had broken into his house.
The prosecution has sought to present Mr. Pistorius as irascible, possessive and trigger-happy. But on Monday he just looked shattered and overwhelmed.
After several hours of questioning, Mr. Pistorius said he had not slept on Sunday night, his mind racing and full of worry. “I’m just really tired at the moment,” he said. “The weight of this is extremely overbearing.”
Mr. Roux asked the judge for permission to end the day of testimony early, at just before 2 p.m. The prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, who is expected to cross-examine Mr. Pistorius aggressively when the time comes, said he would agree as long as the request did not become “a daily occurrence.”
“Well, he does look exhausted,” said the judge, Thokozile Masipa. She adjourned the court for the day and ordered everyone to return at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday.