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Prosecutor Tries to Rattle Pistorius in Murder Trial Gasps in Court As Prosecution Prods Pistorius
(about 11 hours later)
PRETORIA, South Africa — After two tumultuous days in which he gave his account of the night he shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp, the Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was confronted on Wednesday by the man whose mission is to dismantle his story, piece by piece: the state prosecutor, Gerrie Nel. PRETORIA, South Africa — The prosecutor in Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial, Gerrie Nel, had just begun his cross-examination, and he was doing everything he could to goad Mr. Pistorius into losing his composure and his temper.
Combative, dogged and pugnacious, Mr. Nel is known here as the “pit bull,” and he wasted no time in trying to rattle Mr. Pistorius, who had already appeared considerably shaken by the proceedings in his murder trial. And so, in a move that brought gasps to the courtroom here on Wednesday, Mr. Nel taunted Mr. Pistorius with a horrific piece of evidence: a photograph of the shot-open head of the victim, Reeva Steenkamp, with blood and bits of brain oozing from it.
“You killed Reeva Steenkamp, didn’t you?” Mr. Nel told Mr. Pistorius. “Say it. Say, ‘Yes, I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.' ” “That’s it — have a look, Mr. Pistorius!” the prosecutor spat out angrily, as Mr. Pistorius sat, stunned, in the witness box, seeming to crumple in on himself. “I know you don’t want to, because you don’t want to take responsibility, but it’s time that you look at it. Take responsibility for what you’ve done, Mr. Pistorius.”
In a shocking move that brought gasps from the courtroom, Mr. Nel suddenly displayed a photograph of Ms. Steenkamp’s head after the shooting, with blood and brains spilling from it, and all but ordered Mr. Pistorius to look at it. “Take responsibility for what you’ve done!” he snapped. Mr. Pistorius refused, saying he was “tormented” by the memories of what Ms. Steenkamp’s head felt like after she died, when he cradled her in his arms and sobbed over her body. But Mr. Pistorius, the 27-year-old track superstar who claims he shot Ms. Steenkamp, his girlfriend, last year because he thought intruders had broken into his house, would not be drawn in. His voice low and shaking, he said that no, he would not look.
Mr. Pistorius wept, as he has on numerous occasions since his trial began, and the proceedings were delayed while he composed himself. “I’m tormented by what I saw and felt that night,” he said, clenching his jaw and forcing his words out between barely repressed sobs. “As I picked Reeva up, my fingers touched her head. I remember. I don’t have to look at a picture. I was there.”
Mr. Nel repeatedly asked Mr. Pistorius about the location of two ventilation fans in his bedroom on the night of the killing, seeking to undermine both the athlete’s credibility and the defense’s contention that the crime scene was contaminated by clumsy police work and other factors. The confrontation happened early in a riveting series of exchanges between Mr. Pistorius, the celebrated amputee sprinter who has been charged with murder, and Mr. Nel, the pugnacious, dogged prosecutor leading the state’s case against him. Mr. Pistorius spent the first part of this week painstakingly, and painfully, setting out his account of what happened when he shot and killed Ms. Steenkamp, 29, early on Feb. 14, 2013; Mr. Nel is now trying to dismantle that story, piece by piece.
The detail is important, Mr. Nel told the athlete, because “it will show that you are lying.” The stakes could not be higher. If convicted of the most serious charge against him, premeditated murder, Mr. Pistorius, a double below-the-knee amputee who wears prosthetic legs, faces a minimum sentence of 25 years in prison.
Mr. Pistorius said his memory was not good “but I’m not trying to lie.” “My life is on the line,” Mr. Pistorius declared at one point, responding to Mr. Nel’s accusation that he was providing canned, off-the-topic speeches instead of answering the questions put to him.
“I can’t change the truth,” he said. Mr. Nel was unmoved.
Mr. Pistorius, 27, maintains that the killing was a deadly mistake and that he fired four rounds through the locked door to the bathroom in the early morning of Feb. 14, 2013, because he was convinced that an intruder had broken into his house here in Pretoria, and was not aware that Ms. Steenkamp was in the bathroom. But the prosecution says he deliberately killed Ms. Steenkamp, 29, in a fit of rage as the two argued, eventually using a cricket bat to break down the door. “Reeva doesn’t have a life anymore,” he retorted, his voice full of indignation and contempt. “Because of what you’ve done, she’s not alive anymore. So please, listen to the questions and give us the truth.”
With a reputation for combativeness and a string of high-profile victories under his belt, Mr. Nel is known here as the “pit bull,” and he wasted no time in trying to rattle Mr. Pistorius, who has often seemed rattled since the trial began last month.
“You killed Reeva Steenkamp, didn’t you?” Mr. Nel barked, moments after he began his cross-examination. “Say it! Say, ‘Yes, I shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp.’ ”
Mr. Pistorius resisted that bait, too, and for the most part seemed cannier and more clued-in than his often hysterical demeanor throughout the trial would have suggested. He told a fairly smooth story during direct examination at the gentle hands of his lawyer, Barry Roux. But now he faces the considerable task of sticking to that account — and finding plausible explanations for the many holes in it — in the face of Mr. Nel’s relentless, Inspector Javert-like determination.
Based on his questioning so far, Mr. Nel is likely to focus on finding discrepancies between what Mr. Pistorius says now, and what he said in a statement to the court last year. For instance, the prosecutor made much on Wednesday of whether Mr. Pistorius went on his balcony to move two electric fans on the night of the killing; where the fans were plugged in; and whether anything in Mr. Pistorius’s house was tampered with or contaminated during the investigation, as the defense contends.
Mr. Pistorius will also undoubtedly have to explain why Ms. Steenkamp locked the door when she went into the bathroom; why, as Mr. Pistorius claims, he never heard her scream; and why he failed to determine that she was not in bed when he got up to hunt down the intruder he thought had come into the house.
But much of what Mr. Nel did appeared to be pure showmanship, intended to cow and discomfit Mr. Pistorius. For instance, after some legal tussling with Mr. Roux, Mr. Nel showed the court a video depicting Mr. Pistorius firing several weapons at a shooting range some months before Ms. Steenkamp’s death.
At one point, Mr. Pistorius fires at and hits a watermelon with a handgun, whereupon it explodes. His voice can be heard referring to the bullets as “zombie stoppers” and joking that the watermelon was “softer than brains.”
Under questioning, Mr. Pistorius declared that he meant zombie brains, not human ones, and that he was sorry to have made the remark. Mr. Nel tried to get him to admit that he had, in effect, shot the watermelon to see what it would be like to shoot a person’s head and have it explode.
“You know that the same thing happened to Reeva’s head,” Mr. Nel said. “It exploded. Have a look.” It was then that he produced the photograph, displaying it on video monitors for all the court to see.
Mr. Pistorius put his face in his hands and cried, and the court had to take a brief recess.
Mr. Pistorius has maintained from the beginning that the killing was a deadly mistake. And on Wednesday, despite the theatrical exasperation of Mr. Nel, he introduced a new element into his story. For the first time, he said that though he had grabbed his gun reflexively from under his bed and pointed it at the bathroom door, he had never intended even to fire it.
“I didn’t shoot at anyone,” he said. “I didn’t intend to shoot at someone. I shot out of fear.” He fired, he said, because “I didn’t have time to think.” When he “realized the scale of what was happening,” he said, he stopped firing.
“I did not intend to kill Reeva — or anybody else,” he said.“I did not intend to kill Reeva — or anybody else,” he said.
Mr. Nel questioned him closely about whether he had fired his gun accidentally. “At that time I didn’t know what to think,” Mr. Pistorius replied. “I fired into the toilet door. I believe someone was coming out to attack me, to protect myself.” The cross-examination came after Mr. Pistorius finished answering Mr. Roux’s questions about what happened the night Ms. Steenkamp died: how he rushed to the bathroom on his stumps; how he fired four rounds at the bathroom door, thinking an intruder was in the house; how he was then unable to find Ms. Steenkamp, who he had believed was still in the bedroom; and how, crazed with panic, he put on his prosthetic legs, grabbed his cricket bat, and bashed down the bathroom door to find her dying inside.
When Mr. Pistorius told Mr. Nel that his life was “on the line,” the prosecutor replied: “Reeva doesn’t have a life anymore. She’s not alive because of what you’ve done.” Mr. Pistorius struggled to hold back sobs as he described carrying Ms. Steenkamp’s bleeding, broken body down the stairs. He called his neighbors and called an ambulance, he said, struggling fruitlessly to help Ms. Steenkamp breathe and stanch the blood pouring from her body.
Earlier, the defense gently coaxed Mr. Pistorius through a reconstruction of what happened next. But it was too late. “Reeva had already died whilst I was holding her,” he testified. Some hours later, he said, “I asked a policeman if I might wash my hands because the smell of the blood was making me throw up.”
Pausing between sentences, Mr. Pistorius struggled to hold back sobs as he described carrying Ms. Steenkamp’s bleeding body down the stairs. He tried to help Ms. Steenkamp breathe by putting his fingers in her mouth, he said, and tried fruitlessly to stanch the bleeding from her hip. As his testimony unfolded, June Steenkamp, Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, sat grim-faced in the courtroom, looking exhausted beyond measure, wearing a button with a photograph of her daughter on it.
“I just sat there with her and waited for the ambulance to arrive,” he said. The trial is expected to last into May. A judge and two judicial assessors are hearing the testimony and will render a verdict sometime after that; there are no jury trials in South Africa.
But when an ambulance got there, a paramedic informed him that Reeva was dead, he said. “Reeva had already died whilst I was holding her,” he testified. Police officers at the scene took photographs of him for several hours, he said, and finally told him that he was under arrest and took him into custody. At the end of the grueling day, Mr. Pistorius seemed completely undone, but Mr. Nel made it clear he was eager for more. “I’m not going to go away,” he said.
“I asked a policeman if I might wash my hands because the smell of the blood was making me throw up,” he said.
As his testimony unfolded, June Steenkamp, Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, sat impassively in the courtroom, staring ahead. A judge and two judicial assessors are hearing the testimony; there are no jury trials in South Africa.
Then the cross-examination began. The court adjourned briefly after Mr. Nel asked Mr. Pistorius if he had heard the term “zombie stopper,” apparently referring to a type of gun or ammunition, and the defense and the prosecution tussled over whether Mr. Nel could show a video in which Mr. Pistorius used the expression while at a shooting range.
After their argument, the video was broadcast in court. It showed Mr. Pistorius firing several weapons, including a handgun and a shotgun, and using a watermelon as a target. When the melon was hit and exploded, a voice off camera said the gun had functioned as a “zombie stopper” and that the watermelon was “softer than brains.”
“I was shooting at a watermelon with a handgun,” Mr. Pistorius testified. “That was my voice saying those words.” He added that he was “very upset” to hear himself. In any case, he said, he had been referring to zombie brains, not human ones.
Mr. Nel asked Mr. Pistorius whether he had been shooting at the watermelon to see the effect of shooting the same high-powered ammunition at a human brain, but Mr. Pistorius repeatedly answered that that was not what he meant. Mr. Nel also suggested that what happened to Ms. Steenkamp’s head was the same thing that happened to the watermelon.
Mr. Pistorius put his head in his hands and cried.
Continuing his cross-examination, Mr. Nel said parts of Mr. Pistorius’s latest testimony were at odds with the version of events he gave during a bail application shortly after Ms. Steenkamp’s death, when he was in prison and desperately trying to get out.
“My story has never changed,” Mr. Pistorius insisted.