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Oscar Pistorius Not Guilty of Murder; Still Faces Lesser Homicide Charge
Oscar Pistorius Not Guilty of Murder; Still Faces Lesser Homicide Charge
(about 7 hours later)
PRETORIA, South Africa — The judge presiding over the trial of Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic athlete, cleared him of the two most serious murder charges against him on Thursday. But then, after appearing to be on the verge of declaring Mr. Pistorius guilty of a lesser crime, culpable homicide, in the shooting death of his girlfriend, the judge abruptly suspended court proceedings for the rest of the day.
PRETORIA, South Africa — The Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius was declared not guilty of murder on Thursday when the judge in his case said she accepted the main argument in his defense: that he believed he was firing at an intruder rather than at his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, when he killed her in a burst of gunfire through his bathroom door last year.
“We’ll have to stop here and resume tomorrow morning,” the judge, Thokozile Matilda Masipa, said less than half an hour after the session had resumed after a lunch break. She did not explain the adjournment.
But then, after laying out why Mr. Pistorius, 27, might instead be guilty of a lesser crime, culpable homicide, the judge abruptly stopped in the middle of her explanation and suspended court without declaring a verdict on that charge.
In three hours of detailed appraisal of a trial that has transfixed many around the world and that has been compared to the O. J. Simpson case in the United States, Judge Masipa cleared Mr. Pistorius of two charges — premeditated murder, which carries a minimum mandatory term of 25 years, and a lesser charge of homicide known simply as “murder.”
“We’ll have to stop here and resume tomorrow morning,” the judge, Thokozile Matilda Masipa, said, less than half an hour after the court had returned from its lunch break.
Judge Masipa then turned to the lesser charge of culpable homicide, which is comparable to involuntary manslaughter, and said Mr. Pistorius had failed three tests to be exonerated of the charge. One considers what a “reasonable” person would have done under the same circumstances.
Tears streamed down Mr. Pistorius’s face as he listened to the verdict and he began sobbing.
Since his trial opened in March, Mr. Pistorius, 27, a double amputee who has also challenged able-bodied runners, has faced accusations that he deliberately took the life of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, when he fired into a locked bathroom door at his villa in Pretoria, the South African capital, on Feb. 14, 2013. Mr. Pistorius has insisted that he killed Ms. Steenkamp, who was in the bathroom, by mistake, believing that an intruder had entered his home.
Mr. Pistorius, who was born without fibulas and had his lower legs amputated as an infant, was a national hero and an international star for the way that he overcame his disability to compete against able-bodied runners as well as disabled ones. But the sheen has worn off since the death of Ms. Steenkamp on Feb. 14, 2013, and some people said on Thursday that he had gotten off too lightly.
Pointedly, the judge compared Mr. Pistorius’s reaction and behavior to that of the majority of people in South Africa who live under daily threat of crime. “Many people in this country have experienced crime, but they have not resorted to sleeping with a firearm under their pillow,” she said.
“It sends a terrible message about how we tolerate crime in South Africa,” said Martin Hood, a prominent defense lawyer. “The message is that you can just kill someone and get away with it.”
Mr. Pistorius, who lives in a gated complex with round-the-clock guards, has said he became alarmed when he heard what he thought was the sound of a bathroom window being opened. “All the accused had to do was to pick up his cellphone and call security or the police,” the judge said, finding that Mr. Pistorius “acted too hastily,” “used excessive force” and had been negligent in his conduct.
Judge Masipa is expected to render her decision on the culpable homicide charge, as well as on three lesser firearms charges, when the court meets again on Friday. If he is found guilty of culpable homicide, Mr. Pistorius could face anything from no jail time to 15 years in prison. It is rare to receive a long prison term for culpable homicide, which is defined as killing through negligence rather than intent.
At that point, with many observers in the courtroom forecasting that she was about to deliver her judgment, she adjourned the hearing until Friday.
There are no jury trials in South Africa, so it has been left to the judge, with the help of two aides, to render the verdict on her own, and then to read it aloud in court — with a full explanation behind each decision.
Earlier, calmly and coolly taking up piece after piece of evidence, dismissing some, discounting others, offering practical interpretations of still more, Judge Masipa said that although Mr. Pistorius made a poor and evasive witness, she found large parts of his story credible. Most significantly, she said it seemed — or at least that the prosecution had been unable to prove otherwise — that when he shot and killed Ms. Steenkamp, he genuinely believed that intruders had broken into his home and were hiding in the bathroom at the time.
Incomplete as it is, the verdict has so far provided an answer of sorts to the trickiest and hardest to pin down question in this complex case: What was in Mr. Pistorius’s mind when he rose from his bed in the early morning hours that Valentine’s Day, grabbed a pistol, and pumped four shots through his bathroom door? Did he genuinely think that intruders had broken into his house and were hiding in the bathroom?
Sitting in the dock in a dark suit, white shirt and black tie, Mr. Pistorius slumped forward and sobbed as the judge cleared him of the two murder charges.
That is indeed what he thought, according to the judge, however odd that story seemed. And beyond that, she said, the prosecution had failed to prove that Mr. Pistorius’s account was false.
There are no jury trials in South Africa, so it has been left to Judge Masipa, with the help of two aides, to render the verdict on her own. According to normal procedures in the country, the judgment includes a summation of the facts, an analysis of the evidence, and then the announcement of the verdict, charge after charge.
“If there is any possibility of its being true, then he is entitled to an acquittal,” she said.
Judge Masipa also dismissed out of hand large portions of the prosecution’s evidence, in particular the testimony of neighbors who said they had heard the sounds of a man and woman arguing in Mr. Pistorius’s house before the shots were fired. And she said prosecution evidence culled from cellphone text messages and meant to demonstrate that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp’s relationship was “on the rocks,” as she put it, could not be considered relevant. Nor, she said, could seemingly contradictory text message evidence from the defense meant to show that the couple had a loving relationship be helpful in reaching a verdict.
As she read her verdict, calmly and coolly taking up piece after piece of evidence, dismissing some, discounting others, offering practical interpretations of still more, Judge Masipa made it at times difficult to guess where she was headed. For instance, she said that Mr. Pistorius made a poor and evasive witness. But, she said, just because a witness is “untruthful, does not mean he is guilty.”
“In my view, none of this evidence, from the state or defense, proves anything,” she said. “Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable sometimes.”
Taking up the charge of culpable homicide, which is comparable to involuntary manslaughter, Judge Masipa sounded far harsher toward Mr. Pistorius than she had before. She said he had failed what she called the reasonable man test — namely, whether he had behaved the way a reasonable person would have done under the same circumstances.
In being acquitted of the two harshest charges against him, Mr. Pistorius could have escaped a lengthy prison sentence. But culpable homicide, which is defined as the negligent killing of another person, can carry a wide range of sentences, at the discretion of the judge, from no jail time to more than 15 years in prison.
She acknowledged that his disability had left him feeling vulnerable. But she also said that millions of other people — women, children, the elderly, those with limited mobility — were also vulnerable. “Would it be reasonable if without further ado they armed themselves with a firearm when frightened by danger?” she asked. “I do not think so.”
The judge’s partial verdict was a huge setback for the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, who had called for Mr. Pistorius to be convicted of murder and whose pugnacious courtroom manner earned him the nickname the Pit Bull.
She also acknowledged that Mr. Pistorius was particularly afraid of crime. Still no excuse, she said. “Many people in this country have experienced crime, but they have not resorted to sleeping with a firearm under their pillow,” she said.
In his version of the shooting, Mr. Pistorius has described walking on the stumps of his legs in a darkened passageway, with a handgun thrust out before him, before he opened fire on a locked bathroom door. When he broke down the door with a cricket bat, he said, he discovered the bloodstained body of Ms. Steenkamp.
Faced with a potential intruder, Mr. Pistorius did not have to fire a weapon, the judge said. “All the accused had to do was to pick up his cellphone and call security or the police.”
“ 'Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at the door,' ” Judge Masipa quoted Mr. Pistorius as saying, as she listed the various ways he described the shooting during the trial. At times, he said he shot “in the belief that the intruders were coming out” to attack him. At other moments, he said he “never intended to shoot anyone” and had not fired deliberately at the door, the judge said. Part of Mr. Pistorius’s evidence, she said, was “inconsistent with someone who shot without thinking.”
In rendering her verdict, Judge Masipa also dismissed out of hand large portions of the prosecution’s evidence, in particular the testimony of neighbors who, in conflicting accounts, said they had heard various sounds coming from Mr. Pistorius’s house on the fatal night — arguments, screams, shots.
Ms. Steenkamp, Judge Masipa added, “was killed under very peculiar circumstances,” but “what is not conjecture is that the accused armed himself with a loaded firearm.”
And the judge said that evidence culled from WhatsApp text messages and meant to demonstrate that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp’s relationship was “on the rocks,” as the prosecution argued, or was loving and supportive, as the defense maintained, was completely irrelevant.
Nonetheless, the judge ruled, the prosecution’s evidence to support a charge of premeditated murder was “purely circumstantial.”
“None of this evidence, from the state or defense, proves anything,” she said. “Normal relationships are dynamic and unpredictable sometimes.”
“The state clearly has not proved beyond reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty of premeditated murder,” she said. “There are not enough facts.”
Much of the trial, with 41 days of testimony since it opened, has revolved around Mr. Pistorius’s state of mind and intentions when he opened fire. During cross-examination in April, Mr. Pistorius sobbed, wailed and retched as he recalled the events surrounding Ms. Steenkamp’s death.
While the judge said she accepted that Mr. Pistorius would feel vulnerable because of his disability, he had been “a very poor witness” and had been evasive and “lost his composure” under cross-examination.
Until the killing, Mr. Pistorius, who had challenged able-bodied runners only months earlier at the London Summer Olympics in 2012, seemed to be reveling in a glittery career of sporting success and celebrity acclaim.
As the trial unfolded, the defense and the prosecution offered Jekyll-and-Hyde depictions of Mr. Pistorius’s character.
The prosecutor, Mr. Nel, described him as trigger-happy, mendacious, narcissistic and prone to rage. By contrast, the lead defense lawyer, Barry Roux, sought to present him as anxious, vulnerable and fearful of South Africa’s violent crime, laboring under the psychological burden of growing up with a disability. Mr. Pistorius was born without fibula bones in his legs, and both were amputated below the knee when he was 11 months old.
In part, the trial has been held up as evidence of a dramatic reversal of South Africa’s white-dominated apartheid-era legal system. In 1998, four years after South Africa’s first democratic election, Judge Masipa, who turned 66 on Thursday, became only the second black female judge to be appointed to the High Court. Born in a poor township, she had been a social worker and newspaper journalist before studying law at the height of the apartheid era. Now, under South African judicial protocols, lawyers and witnesses are obliged to address her with the honorific “My Lady.”
But the trial has also highlighted the country’s continued racial preoccupations and its high levels of crime against women. In other cases, Judge Masipa has handed down tough sentences in cases of rape and violence against women.
Mr. Pistorius also faces three counts relating to firearms offenses.
