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Oscar Pistorius Guilty of Culpable Homicide in Killing of Girlfriend Oscar Pistorius Guilty of Culpable Homicide in Killing of Girlfriend
(about 7 hours later)
PRETORIA, South Africa — Oscar Pistorius, the disabled track star who once commanded stellar heights of international competition at the Paralympic and Olympic Games, was found guilty on Friday of culpable homicide, equivalent to manslaughter, after being acquitted of murder charges for killing his girlfriend. PRETORIA, South Africa — The murder trial of the Paralympic star Oscar Pistorius lurched to a close on Friday when he was convicted of culpable homicide in the shooting death last year of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. But in a case that reflected South Africa’s complicated obsession with race, crime and celebrity, many South Africans found understanding the verdict to be as difficult as trying to fathom exactly what was in Mr. Pistorius’s mind the night he pulled the trigger.
Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa agreed to extend Mr. Pistorius’s bail until his sentencing hearing begins, on Oct. 13. She said she believed the defense’s explanation that Mr. Pistorius had sold his property to pay his legal fees and dismissed suggestions that he would try to flee the country. It is unclear yet whether Mr. Pistorius, who had earlier been acquitted of the two more serious murder charges against him, will do time in jail. The sentence for culpable homicide, a crime roughly commensurate with involuntary manslaughter, is left to the discretion of the judge and can range from no jail time to, in the most extreme cases, 15 years in prison. Lawyers say that often the sentences are very light.
The verdict marked the culmination of a closely watched drama that transfixed many around the world. Mr. Pistorius shot and killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013, saying he believed an intruder had entered his home. Completing her two-day reading of the verdict on Friday, Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa scheduled the sentencing hearing for Oct. 13 and -– over the angry objections of the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel -– granted bail to Mr. Pistorius until then.
Wielding a handgun loaded with hollow-point ammunition, he opened fire on a locked toilet cubicle door only to discover when he broke the door down with a cricket bat that Ms. Steenkamp was inside. The prosecution sought to prove that he intended to kill her, but he called her death an accident and a mistake. Some South Africans felt that Mr. Pistorius got off too lightly. “Will Oscar Walk?” said the headline in The Star newspaper. On Twitter, Trevor Noah, a comedian, asked why Molemo Maarohanye, a black rap star known as Jub Jub, had been sentenced to 25 years in prison for killing three people with his car while driving high, while “Oscar went to fetch a gun but he gets less time?” And on the News24 website, a commenter named Peter Tracey called the verdict “a very sad indictment of our justice system.”
Judge Masipa asked Mr. Pistorius, 27, to stand in the wooden dock in the North Gauteng High Court here in the South African capital as she pronounced her verdict. The athlete, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt and black tie, looked straight ahead, his hands crossed in front of him, seemingly impassive after several instances during the trial when he wept, wailed and retched. Friday’s proceedings were the culmination of a grueling roller-coaster of a trial that began in March, a little more than a year after Mr. Pistorius grabbed a handgun in the middle of the night on Valentine’s Day, pumped four shots through the locked door of his bathroom and killed Ms. Steenkamp, his 29-year-old girlfriend.
In the hushed courtroom, with members of both the Steenkamp and the Pistorius families in attendance, the judge told Mr. Pistorius that he had acted negligently when he opened fire. The world may never know what he was thinking that night; perhaps even he does not know. But while many saw his account as implausible, the defense he gave -– that he believed an intruder had broken into his house and was lurking in the bathroom, and that it did not occur to him that Ms. Steenkamp could have been in there -– spoke to many South Africans’ deep fear of crime and home invasions.
The prosecution, she said, had failed to bring “strong circumstantial evidence” to support its case of murder, while Mr. Pistorius’s version of events “could reasonably be true.” Mr. Pistorius’s story was vehemently disputed by Mr. Nel, the pugnacious prosecutor, who portrayed him as volatile, spoiled, jealous and obsessed with guns. He contended that Mr. Pistorius had killed Ms. Steenkamp, a law graduate and reality television star, in a fit of rage as the two argued late into the night.
After the shooting, Mr. Pistorius had been prompt in calling for help, the judge said. He prayed to God and sought to resuscitate Ms. Steenkamp, a model and law-school graduate, and his behavior, the judge said, “was inconsistent” with that of someone who wanted to commit murder. Much the way the O. J. Simpson trial became an obsession in the United States years ago, the Pistorius case has riveted South Africa. Mr. Pistorius was for many years a national hero for the way he rose above his disability, competing against both disabled and able-bodied athletes in international competitions. Born without fibula bones, he had both his legs amputated below the knee when he was a baby and later became known, admiringly, as the Blade Runner, for the scythe-like curved prostheses he used while competing.
Moreover, she said, “it cannot be said that the accused did not entertain a genuine belief that there was an intruder in the house.” He could thus not be found guilty on murder charges, Judge Masipa said. Handsome, charming, extraordinarily gifted as an athlete, Mr. Pistorius became an emblem of South Africa’s pride and craving for international acclaim. He carried the flag for his country in the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympic Games in London.
But, she said, Mr. Pistorius had been negligent when he opened fire, knowing that somebody might be inside the toilet cubicle. But the killing of Ms. Steenkamp stripped the sheen off what had been a story of success and celebrity, exposing an uglier side to Mr. Pistorius – a side in which he had a mercurial temper, was a jealous and sometimes angry boyfriend, drove too fast, was enamored and irresponsible with guns, and used his celebrity to get what he wanted.
“A reasonable person with a similar disability would have foreseen the possibility that the person behind the door” would have been killed, the judge said. The case raised numerous questions -– about fame, disability, crime, violence against women, class and, looming always in the background, race -– in a country uneasy about where it stands on many of those matters.
Mr. Pistorius was born without fibula bones and both legs were amputated below the knee at age 11 months, leaving him to compete on scythe-like prostheses that inspired the nickname Blade Runner, after the movie. As an athlete, fighting adversity and competing against able-bodied as well as disabled athletes, Mr. Pistorius became an emblem of South Africa’s self-image as a land that punches above its weight. But the killing stripped the sheen off what had been a glittery story of success and celebrity. Many of these collided in the courtroom. The judge presiding over the trial of Mr. Pistorius -– white, rich, privileged -– was a 66-year-old black woman who grew up poor in Soweto, began studying law in the throes of apartheid, had been arrested during a protest, and did not earn a law degree until she was in her 40’s. The courtroom, too, reflected a reality of race in South Africa: virtually all the principals –- the lawyers, the accused, the families -– were white, while virtually all the security guards, cleaners and court functionaries were black.
Since there are no jury trials in South Africa, the judge arrived at her verdict with the help of two aides, known as assessors. She said the findings were unanimous. While the verdict enraged some South Africans, who said it sent a terrible message about domestic violence and also gave people the right to kill and then claim they had not meant to do it, it also reflected what seems to be a preoccupation of Judge Masipa: great indignation about possible overreaching by the prosecution.
The judge also acquitted Mr. Pistorius of two firearms charges and convicted him of another. She said state prosecutors had “failed to establish that the accused is guilty” of firing a pistol through the sunroof of a car and “must be acquitted.” She also acquitted him of a charge of illegal possession of ammunition. On a count relating to a shot fired in a crowded restaurant, she found Mr. Pistorius guilty. She raised questions about the defense, calling Mr. Pistorius an unimpressive and evasive witness whose histrionics in court -– he sobbed uncontrollably and retched at times -– did him no favors. But time and time again, she criticized the prosecution for failing to prove its case on the more serious murder charges to the standards required in law, beyond a reasonable doubt.
The verdicts represented a crushing blow for the lead prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, who had demanded that Mr. Pistorius be convicted of premeditated murder, an offense that carries a mandatory minimum jail term of 25 years. In a further blow to the prosecution, Judge Masipa on Friday acquitted Mr. Pistorius of two of the three firearms charges against him, saying the state had failed to provide enough evidence to support them. She declared him guilty on one charge, of illegally firing a gun that had been passed to him under a table in a crowded restaurant during a previous episode.
Judge Masipa did not immediately pronounce a sentence. Culpable homicide, which relates to negligence rather than intent, can draw a 15-year term, but the judge has wide discretion in determining the punishment. Either side can appeal the case to a higher court, and the National Prosecuting Authority said it would decide whether to do so after sentencing. As far as the murder charges, because the prosecution had failed to bring “strong circumstantial evidence,” the judge said, Mr. Pistorius’s account “could reasonably be true.” It was impossible to prove, she said, that Mr. Pistorius “did not entertain a genuine belief that there was an intruder in the house.”
After the verdict, Mr. Pistorius’s lawyer, Barry Roux, asked for Mr. Pistorius to remain free on bail, as he has been for most of the 18 months since the killing, living in the luxurious home of a wealthy uncle, Arnold Pistorius. “I think it is premature to think of a likely sentence in this case,” Mr. Roux said. “There is no reason not to allow him out on bail.” As he was pronounced not guilty of murder on Thursday, Mr. Pistorius kept perfectly still, tears and mucous pouring from his eyes and nose. When the judge found him guilty of culpable homicide, he barely reacted at all.
Mr. Nel, the prosecutor, disagreed and called for the athlete to be taken into custody following his conviction. “This is a very serious case that makes a lengthy sentence possible,” Mr. Nel said, alluding to a potential risk of suicide. “I do not think it is in the interests of justice” for him to be released on bail, the prosecutor said. Sometime after court adjourned on Friday, Mr. Pistorius made his way through the scrum of reporters and onlookers, free — at least until his sentencing hearing. And then the uncle with whom he has been living during the trial, Arnold Pistorius, read a statement out loud.
When the court adjourned to allow Judge Masipa to deliberate on whether Mr. Pistorius should be granted bail, bailiffs led him to a holding cell. As the court resumed, however, Judge Masipa said she had not been persuaded by the prosecution’s arguments against bail. “We as a family remain deeply affected by this devastating tragedy,” he said. “There are no victors in this.”
The trial began in March and had initially been set to last three weeks, but it was frequently delayed, most dramatically by weeks of psychiatric tests which established that the runner was mentally fit to stand trial.
The case, broadcast around the world and compared in its global fascination to the O. J. Simpson trial in the United States, has touched on far broader issues in this still divided society, 20 years after the democratic elections that formally ended the harsh racial segregation called apartheid. South Africa still struggles with race, violence and crime — factors that have not been lost on Judge Masipa, who grew up in the hardscrabble township of Soweto and struggled against the racial odds to qualify as a lawyer.
The judge acknowledged Thursday that Mr. Pistorius was particularly afraid of crime. But in a land where millions face danger without the gated residential complexes, security guards — and highly paid legal teams — of the rich elite, she was careful to note that his fears did not excuse his actions. “Many people in this country have experienced crime,” she said, “but they have not resorted to sleeping with a firearm under their pillow.”