Things are heating up as Judge Thokozile Masipa reads her verdict in the murder trial of Paralympic and Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius. So far Judge Thokozila has found that the prosecution could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Pistorius had killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp with premeditated intent.
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A large failure in the state’s argument, it seems, was down to inconsistencies in the way its witnesses remembered the events of the early hours of 14 February 2013, the day Pistorius shot and killed Steenkamp.
Masipa halted court proceedings while she was considering the charge of culpable homicide, although it seems she was leaning towards a guilty verdict on that front.
Using the reasonable person test, Masipa appeared to shoot holes in the defence’s argument that Pistorius’ disability and past circumstances could be used as mitigating factors in his sentencing.
Instead, she suggested that he could have called the security officers in his housing estate.
“There is no reason why he could not do so before running to the bathroom with a loaded gun,” she said. “The accused had reasonable time to think, reflect and act reasonably.”
Watch the remainder of the sentencing live when it resumes tomorrow:
Update:
On day two of the verdict, Judge Masipa found Pistorius guilty of culpable homicide and not guilty of an earlier restaurant shooting and of shooting from the sun roof of a moving vehicle. The culpable homicide charge carries no minimum prison sentence and a maximum sentence of 15 years.
