He’s recently in the news for his early parole, but to my mind his conviction for murder was probably unjust.
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The prosecution was not able to rebut his testimony that he fired on what he thought was a burglar in his home. This was a reasonable fear - Pistorius is a double amputee despite his Olympic medals, and he lived in a neighborhood that was particularly attractive to break-in robberies due to the residents’ wealth.
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The prosecution could not provide a motive for murder - the best they could speculate was that they had had an argument, but the prosecution could not provide details of any supposed argument, nor substantiate it from the testimony of any witnesses who actually would have been able to hear it.
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It probably was negligent and contributory to have fired on an “attacker” he could not see, but conversely, had he intended to murder his girlfriend during a spontaneous argument, there’s no reason for him to have taken the risk of firing through a door in order to do so.
The traditional elements of the crime of murder are means, motive, and opportunity. Two of these are stipulated since, by the defense account, Pistorius fired the gun that killed Reeva Steenkamp The prosecution’s argument for motive was specious speculation at best, and Pistorius’ judicial conviction on appeal represents a miscarriage of justice since there was really no reason given to reject his defense. His original conviction of culpable homicide and reckless endangerment was correct and shouldn’t have been appealed.
Sure, but the prosecution had no evidence that Pistorius had abused Steenkamp, or anyone. Only that she’d been shot by him though an opaque door.
She was shot through an interior door by a man who previously abused her, shortly after a fight.
It’s really not hard to explain unless you need to make Pistorius look innocent.
Right, except that both the “abuse” and the “fight” were just speculation by the prosecutor. There was no evidence of either.
In any case the crime as proposed by the prosecutors never made any sense: someone actually intent on murder doesn’t put a door in the way.
Hiding in the bathroom is what a someone fleeing a violent boyfriend would do.
But she wasn’t “hiding”, and there were no indications she went there to “flee” rather than just for a piss or something.
If she had been hiding then Pistorius wouldn’t have known she was there, unless he was just randomly shooting through all of the closed doors in his house. It’s Pistorius you propose she was “hiding” from, right? The “murder” theory just doesn’t hold up.