Heartwarming Olympic Story Goes to Hell

Oscar "Blade Runner" Pistorius charged with murdering his girlfriend:

http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/...nner-oscar-pistorius-charged-with-murder?lite

In an affidavit, Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee track star, has told how he accidentally killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. (from The National Post)

So he hears a noise from the bathroom but doesn't check if his girlfriend is still in bed, which even if dark he could do by touch. He "screams" at the intruder and his girlfriend decides not to answer, despite how his approach must have been obvious. It's not impossible to believe, but it all stretches credibility.

Terrible business whatever the case, I only hope the trial isn't botched.

Wait, people actually keep guns under their pillow?

Judging from the bail hearing today, the message seems to be that the prosecution had better get its shit together because the police are en route to fucking it up. I mean, it's always possible he's not guilty of something akin to premeditated murder, but just not that likely, and as a gun owner myself I have little tolerance for people that think being a trigger-happy maniac is the best-case reading of their actions.

This is turning out to be quite the soap opera. One of the detectives on the case is facing seven counts of attempted murder from a drunken shooting incident a few years ago.

Assuming he's being honest, he didn't even consider the possibility that it was just his own girlfriend using the bathroom until it was too late? Maybe if he was groggy from having just woken up a few seconds ago, but he went through a fair number of actions there. And that kind of ultra-paranoid, aggressive behaviour is going to put you outside the "how would a reasonable person act" standards...

Yeah the Pistorius story seems pretty unlikely but fortunately for him he's being tried in South Africa where the police fucking suck and thanks to apartheid they don't even have jury trials.

It's one thing for him to not realize his girlfriend was in the bed, but how does that explain her not responding if he was yelling? That doesn't make sense and hurts his story, IMHO.

Other stuff about his past relationships isn't helping convince me the police are wrong in their theory.

Darn those intruders always sneaking in through windows and locking the bathroom door.


Was this guy on drugs of any kind? Intoxicated? It's about the only way I'd buy that he thought it was an intruder.

I've been following the live blogging of the trial because I'm sick and it's a slow news week.

From what I can see the case is going to hinge largely on the credibility of the eyewitnesses who claim to have seen Pistorius' lights on and heard a couple fighting. Pistorius story is pretty unlikely but just about plausible if we assume he was on some kind of medication that was making him groggy and paranoid and make allowances for his reduced line of sight and increased feelings of vulnerability from not having his stumps in. Even if we accept his version he should definitely get some sort of jail time just for shooting four times into a tiny room that he thought someone was inside of with no evidence that they were armed, threatening or even what their intentions were. I mean if we except his version the 'burglar' must have remained completely silent or else he would have known it was his girlfriend and he wasn't backing away from the supposed threat but advancing towards it firing.

As a sidebar the trial is pushing back into the international news the sorry state of South African policing:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/feb/21/south-africa-police-brutality-shooting

To compare the UK, a country with a slightly larger population, had only 23 deaths in police custody or resulting from police action in 2011. The only number I could find for the US listed 583 killings by the police in 2012, but the US has a 6 times larger population (so around 97 deaths at South Africa scale).

South Africa is insane as far as crime and police go. This video shows how much like the Wild West it can be, except with cars, better guns, and helicopters: explicit footage of a gunfight including dead bodies. With that level of stability it's not exactly surprising their police get away with murder, which of course only worsens the situation.

Yeah, the recent massacre of 34 striking miners by the police being the most obvious example. The inquiry into it is still ongoing but there is already fairly solid evidence that the police shot and killed unarmed, fleeing, miners and then planted weapons on their corpses to try and provide themselves with cover. I watched another recent report that they (the police) were rounding up survivors of the massacre in the night, bundling them into the backs of vans, and threatening their families should they give evidence to the inquiry.

Even if his story is true, he is still guilty of murder, just not premeditated. SA law I believe only allows self defense if you are in imminent danger of your life. A suspect burglar behind a locked bathroom door isn't that

Yeah, I saw today that even the defence lawyer seems to be conceding that Pistorius is at the very least guilty of 'culpable homicide' despite the rhetoric of the first day of the hearing where he seemed to be implying Pistorius should just walk free. Apparently in South Africa culpable homicide is defined legally as "the unlawful negligent killing of a human being" which sounds like sort of a halfway house between murder and manslaughter. I mean if you shoot four shots into a tiny toilet room you are basically trying to kill whoever is in there. I think the fact that he armed himself and then went towards what he is claiming he thought was a home invader, and then fired the shots, will make it hard for the defence to argue that he acted entirely out of fear/terror.