Tuesday, March 25, 2014
Labels:
murder trial
Oscar Pistorious trial: Prosecutuion wraps case
According
to defense lawyer, Brian Webber, Oscar Pistorius will most likely
take the stand to open the defense's case adding there's no specific
requirement for him to testify first but it is normal practice.
It
is "likely" Pistorius will take the stand to open the
defense's case, said defense lawyer Brian Webber, adding there's no
specific requirement for him to testify first but it is normal
practice.
"I
don't think we have a choice, it's a question of when," Webber
said of Pistorius' testimony, which legal experts describe as
critical because the judge will have a chance to assess firsthand
whether he is a credible witness. Judge Thokozile Masipa will deliver
a ruling in the case, with the help of two assessors. There is no
jury system in South Africa.
After
the prosecution closed its case, defense lawyer Barry Roux asked for
time to consult some of the 107 state witnesses who had not testified
in the case against Pistorius in the ongoing murder trial . Masipa
adjourned the trial until Friday so that Roux could prepare his
arguments that Pistorius, 27, killed the 29-year-old model by
accident, thinking she was an intruder in his home.
Pistorius
has sometimes reacted emotionally during the prosecution's case,
shedding tears this week during testimony of text messages that he
and Steenkamp exchanged in the weeks before he killed her in the
early hours of Feb. 14, 2013. In earlier testimony, he heaved and
vomited at a pathologist's descriptions of Steenkamp's gunshot
wounds. At other times, he has appeared calm, taking notes during
testimony and conferring with his lawyers during breaks.
On
Tuesday the Olympian made rare, brief comments to reporters
after the court adjourned stated that he's going through "a
tough time" in a rare comment after the prosecution closed its
case against the double-amputee runner.
"It's
a tough time," Pistorius said. "We've got a lot ahead of
us."
Earlier
Tuesday, defense lawyer Roux sought to show that Pistorius had a
loving relationship with the girlfriend he killed, referring to
telephone messages in which they exchanged warm compliments and said
they missed each other.
The
testimony contrasted with several messages read in court a day
earlier in which Pistorius and Steenkamp argued in the weeks before
he shot her, part of the prosecution's effort to bolster its case
that the athlete killed his girlfriend after an argument. In those
messages, Steenkamp told the runner that she was sometimes scared by
his behavior, which included jealous outbursts in front of other
people.
Roux
noted that the tense messages amounted to a tiny fraction of the
roughly 1,700 messages that police Capt. Francois Moller, a cellular
telephone expert, extracted from the mobile devices of the couple.
Roux noted a Jan. 19 exchange in which Reeva sent Pistorius a photo
of herself in a hoodie and making a kissing face, followed by the
message: "You like it?"
"I
love it," Pistorius said, according to the message.
"So
warm," Steenkamp responded.
Roux
was also granted permission to show CCTV video, earlier broadcast by
Sky News, which showed Pistorius and Steenkamp kissing in a
convenience store.
Chief
prosecutor Gerrie Nel questioned the relevance of showing the
convenience store video, saying he could ask for a courtroom viewing
of another video, also broadcast by Sky News, that shows Pistorius at
a gun range, firing a shotgun and using a pistol to shoot a
watermelon, which bursts on impact.
Nel
also said that many messages of affection between the couple were
brief, in contrast to the texted arguments, which were far longer and
dwelled on their relationship in greater depth.
Earlier,
Moller said Steenkamp connected to the Internet on her cellular
telephone hours before Pistorius killed her. She made the connection
just before 9 p.m. on Feb. 13, 2013, and the connection lasted for
more than 11 hours, possibly because social media programs were still
open.
Pistorius
shot her shortly after 3 a.m. in the early hours of Valentine's Day,
and Moller's extraction of data also shed light on what appeared to
be a frantic series of phone calls made from one of Pistorius'
cellular telephones after the killing. They include a call to the
administrator of the housing estate where Pistorius lived at 3:19
a.m. on Feb. 14, a call a minute later to an ambulance service and a
call a minute after that to the housing estate security.
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