First Person: Airing Pistorius evidence won't help do justice
Oscar Pistorius was abusive and possessive, his paranoia fuelled by illegal drugs. He snapped reading texts from his pregnant girlfriend's former Springbok boyfriend, smashed her skull with an implement before shooting her four times as she cowered behind a bathroom door. This is the sensational story presented to the world months before his trial – the trial that will decide if any of it was actually true.
If Oscar Pistorius was being tried in this country, I would be able to tell you what the charges were, of his denials, that he had been granted bail, when he was next due in court and his likely trial date.
By contrast, in South Africa almost any information is fair game, every titbit of speculation placed in the public forum, whether true or not.
As the world learnt of the fate of Reeva Steenkamp, South African police were openly rubbishing press suggestions Pistorius had accidentally shot his girlfriend, publicly calling this a case of premeditated murder.
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Shattering my post-London 2012 glow, I was dismayed to "learn" illegal steroids had been recovered, that Reeva's skull had been caved in and that a "bloodied cricket bat" was present.
The steroids evidence was presented at the bail hearing but, unforgivably, it was erroneous.
Police had not done their homework; the drugs were neither steroids nor illegal.
Magistrate Nel broadcast his bail decision to the world, including his serious misgivings about the credibility of Pistorius's case.
I am incredulous that the defence had put their case in the public domain and that the judge had publicly expressed misgivings about it at such an early stage of the process
On a charge of murder in England, the Crown Court bail hearing would have been held in private, lasted, at most, 30 minutes to an hour, and would not have been the subject of detailed press reporting.
Owing to our Contempt of Court Act, little more would be known by the time the matter came before a jury here, leaving them genuinely in a position to honour their oath to try the case according to the evidence presented in court.
The jury system in the UK is honest, not easily abused and has withstood the test of history. It is the proper way to do justice.
South Africa abolished jury trial in 1969. One judge will have to perform the mental gymnastics required to sift the evidence from the prejudicial pre-trial chatter.
Philip Gibbs is a barrister specialising in crime and sports law at KCH, Garden Square, Leicester.
He blogs at gibbsbarrister.blogspot.com
2 Comments
by iangrace
Sunday, March 03 2013, 4:53AM
“Pistorius is claiming in brief that he mistook a woman in an ensuite bathroom - spending the night with him for a second consecutive occasion - was a burglar so he shot through the door four times in the pitch black when he couldn't see anything. However his Affidavit makes reference to a bathroom window being open. The Law in SA states that gun owners must fire a warning shot - but Pistorius felt the need to fire four times. His whole Affidavit is just hogwash, nothing adds up, nothing is believable, I won't suspend my disbelief - to do so would be to justify the worst domestic violence in this Case, and in the future, when others choose to murder their partners and then blame it on burglars and a fear of crime..... yet sleep with their balcony doors open without their blinds drawn in the case of Pistorius.
He had to stop Reeva Steenkamp phoning for help, he was helpless with the bathroom door locked and her inside the cubicle with a mobile phone. He had done something terrible - I assume with a cricket bat - and so he made a decision to silence her. Next stop, phone the Lawyer and the Brother - who were on the scene before the Police and concoct a story and contaminate the crime scene by using the cricket bat to bash in the bathroom door, hence what were mistaken for shots by witnesses being heard some time apart. Any inaccuracies are almost irrelevant, he shot four times to kill a person cornered in a bathroom inside a toilet cubicle he could neither see or identify, even when she invariably screamed in pain and fear - it beggars belief.
His Lawyer and Brother were on the scene before the Police. Why? How?
Pistorius I am calling you out to be a murderer, I don't care how much money you have or who you employ. You must struggle every day to put your prosthetic leg out of bed to coin a phrase, to look in the mirror because all you see is a murderer or the unarmed woman Reeva Steenkamp who you killed, irrefutably a statement of fact. You are a coward, a liar and an ex-athlete who has thrown his whole life away and will spend the next 25 years in the worst prisons SA has to offer, where you will be a target for the worst kind of abuse, but nothing approaching the horror you inflicted on Ms Steenkamp.”
by iangrace
Sunday, March 03 2013, 4:44AM
“The presiding Magistrate was Desmond Nair not Nel, acting for the Prosecution. My understanding too was that in order to secure Bail the Defence submitted an Affidavit which may turn out to be a disastrous move. You believe that the Jury system is the proper way to do Justice? As a matter of fact there are more hung juries now than ever before, no doubt due to the skill of Legal Representatives to happily and without conscience twist the most simple facts in order to establish a modicum of doubt in Jurors minds. I understand the general point that you are trying to advance, however just because one country does things differently does not undermine their system - as far as I am concerned, it maybe only in the Court of Public Opinion, for those who care to read Pistorius Affidavit and have a basic understanding of human behaviour, that Justice may indeed by served.”