Oscar Pistorius: Guilty or Not?

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http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/17/world/afr ... ius-trial/

We were discussing this in one of my classes in school a couple of weeks ago, and the consensus seems to be that he is guilty. Everybody said he put on an emotional show just to look innocent. I think his story holds up, even though some details are... fishy.

Do you think Pistorius murdered his girlfriend? Or was it unintentional? The world may never know...

I have been following the trial. sorry to say (it's sad when someone with so much potential wastes it), he seems guilty.

he doesn't pass the smell test.

Join us next week when we will be asking if bears defecate in the woods and is The Pope is catholic?

His crocodile tears don't have me convinced that he's not guilty.

I prefer to wait for the courts to do their work, rather than second guessing results before the evidence has even been fully presented.

Guilty.

From what I've read, he has a history of domestic violence. Also, I've read that domestic violence against women is very common in South Africa - unfortunately.

Certainly guilty of some form of negligent homicide, but I'll wait for the verdict on the murder part.

He certainly seems guilty to me at this point. Barry Roux has now made such an utterly stupid mistake with calling that last witness to testify it's unbelievable. Roger Dixon was not an expert in many of areas he testified about, so he shouldn't of been called as expert witness. And seriously, if you really wanted to show that a gun could sound like a cricket bat, you should really hire an acoustics expert to replicate the exact same situation, not music DJ's to record the sounds in an open field (the fact that the bathroom and the whole house is enclosed area is relevant as to what could of been heard). I don't know the defence can recover from this other than to ditch their own expert witness. Also, there's still the issue of recognisable food being discovered in Reeva's stomach at the autopsy and why it should be there 8 hours after they had supposedly eaten. I also want to wait for the verdict but at the moment, it doesn't look so good for Oscar.

He definitely seems genuinely emotional in some cases and he seems to PTSD. However, I don't understand why people don't get that his emotions are irrelevant, it's got nothing to with with whether he's telling the truth or not. He could be genuinely remorseful because he knew it was intentional or he could be remorseful because it was an accident and that he didn't intend killing her. Alternatively, he could just be feeling sorry for himself at the prospect of spending life in prison. Either way, it does not matter if his tears are real or not, his emotions are irrelevant and only the facts matter.

I haven't really seen any proof or evidence that he has a history of domestic violence. The only incident that I could find in the media was that one assault charge brought against him by a friend of Samantha Taylor's (his ex girlfriend) which he said was an accident when he slammed a door on her trying to kick her out the house during a party. There wasn't any testimony about it during the trial either, barring some instances of screaming and shouting (which could be emotional abuse), but I haven't heard anything about physical violence.

It's hard to find anything very concrete online. But there does seem to be evidence of emotional abuse at the very least. You might say the text that his wife sent in this article is irrelevant but emotional abuse does often escalate to physical violence.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/03/25/r ... -breaking/

In any case, his defense seems weak to me and so does his character.

he cannot escape his karma. he will live with what happened now and into the distant future.

Yes, I thought that those text messages were evidence emotional abuse too when I first heard them but I think that context is also important. Some of it was mitigated for me when Barry Roux took him through those messages while he was on the witness stand, trying to explain the context of those messages. For example, the issue about leaving Darren Fresco's party early seemed to about the fact that he wanted to stay only for a short time and that his diet prohibited him from eating anything at the party. At least, I think that was his explanation. Also, she wasn't his wife because he wasn't married to her. She was his girlfriend of 3 months.

Also, if you're thinking of him as a jealous, abusive and insecure man, then there's also this anomaly that he seemed neither jealous nor did he even mind that she met with an ex-boyfriend just 2 days before the incident. He knew that she was going to meet him and even said that it was fine for her to do so in one of their message exchanges read out in court. For me, that doesn't seem to fit with that picture of him.

I'm a bit dismayed by how many people are basing their judgement on Pistorius's demeanor and body language, things that we're both not equipped to read and often complain of being judged on ourselves, as our external reactions to things often do not conform to what others expect. I consider that tendency to be a major flaw in the jury system generally, people reading more into their perceptions of the defendant personally than into the actual evidence, but I find it particularly galling to encounter it among a group that really should know better.

Obviously, he's going to paint himself in the best light possible. Obviously, he is going to lie on the stand.

Frankly, his defense is laughable. I would have a hard time sitting the trial and remaining objective, which is why I will never be a juror (I would never allow it).

I knew an abuser once. He wasn't emotionally abusive but he had patterns and everything Oscar's wife says about him reminds me a lot of this guy. Just an a**hole. And frankly, Aspie's have no obligation to feel empathy toward abusers. Especially since we are more likely to be the targets of abuse than the reverse. I doubt any of us would actually want to know this guy.