Who Put the ‘Story’ in Pistorius? – My Thoughts on the Oscar Pistorius Trial

Reeva and Oscar in happier times

My secong blog on this is here.

Trial by TV

The initial coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial has left me rather frustrated. The BBC promised to show live coverage and I assumed this would be available on the Red Button whenever the trial was in progress. As it is, they covered a bit of day one then did a few brief reports before abandoning it altogether in the second week.

Sky News has shown a little more willing and at least supplies a summary programme each day and a catch-up at weekends. Now that Pistorius is on the stand, we’re getting full live coverage at last. However, there’s nothing like objective reporting and this is nothing like objective reporting. In my opinion, it’s been biased in favour of Pistorius, in particular the commentary and conclusions of Alex Crawford, the Special Correspondent.

Crawford admits that the Pistorius family has been very friendly to the press, offering them water and so forth and she happily relates statistics told her by Pistorius’s uncle. This doesn’t bode well for honest or impartial observation. She talks about the ‘terrible tragedy’ that has kept these two families (the Pistoriuses and the Steenkamps) apart as if it were an act of God, a tsunami, not an action by a member of one of the families. We can draw the conclusion that Reeva’s mother, June, has not been as chatty to the press but has instead remained detached and dignified. For this show of strength, she’s been described in the media as ‘unmoved’ – I’ve seen her cry but she’s bowed her head and tried to hide it. Even when Crawford calls her ‘stoic’, it’s in a tone of slight disapproval. She seems to expect Mrs Steenkamp to feel pity for Oscar. Why would a mother waste tears on the person who she believes killed her daughter in cold blood?

Alex Crawford, Sky News

Crawford is very anxious about how much more Oscar can take, and obviously feels a lot of sympathy for him, constantly stressing how traumatic hearing the details of what he’s done is, how he’s ‘very pale, very white, ashen’ and how it must be terrible for his family to see him so upset. How does she think Reeva Steenkamp’s family feels? They’re only ever mentioned as an afterthought, if at all. At no point does she consider that Oscar’s tears and the retching might be put on or that if real they might be as much for himself as they are for Reeva. This can't be countenanced.

Instead Crawford inserts facts learnt from the family into the news feed, such as, the uncle’s opinion that Pistorius will never get over this. Neither will Reeva. She says, of Oscar, ‘he and his sister have been reading books … they’ve been very religious books’, that they’ve been having ‘Bible readings at their house’. This is all designed to sway the viewer into thinking that the family is a religious one (not relevant to the case), along with the aforementioned statistic, delivered to her by Uncle Arnold, that the prosecution has only used 0.7% of the text messages to build its case. I’m not saying that this is untrue. I’m sure it probably is but shouldn’t a journalist consider the reliability of the source? I wish that she would spend just 0.7% of the time she spends angsting over Oscar's suffering, reflecting on Reeva's.

Not content with seeing things only from the defence point of view, Crawford also brings to the fore opinions she’s had Tweeted to her about prosecution witnesses – someone Tweeted her to say they thought the state’s ballistics expert was arrogant. First of all, we don't know who this person was and theirs is just a random opinion so why should it be presented on air as an addendum to the expert panel section? Then, if you saw this witness, he was clear, sure and articulate, and at no time appeared arrogant. He didn’t break down under cross – is that arrogance?

After all, one fact is not in dispute. Oscar Pistorius shot and killed Reeva Steenkamp. The only things at issue are whether it was deliberate or not, whether he knew it was her he was shooting at. Even if he really believed that a dangerous intruder would break in and lock himself in the toilet, is he within his rights to shoot and kill said intruder?

Barry Roux

The Defence – Barry Roux

Much is made of Barry Roux’s ‘grandstanding’ (Sky’s term not mine) as if it were effective; of him ‘practising his art’. Alex Crawford relays to viewers that he’s ‘shredded the prosecution’s case’ when all he’s done all day is split hairs and introduce red herrings, raise points that are immaterial to the matter at hand. But no one ever questions relevance or redirects. His objective seems to be to confuse the issue, cast doubt over minor details when it really doesn’t matter whether Pistorius’s ex-girlfriend thought he took his phone to bed with him often or every night. And Sky seems to be complicit in this, Alex Crawford often refusing to recognise the crucial evidence of the day and cutting off the ‘experts’ when they start to make a good point.

Roux badgers witnesses (which I’m sure wouldn't be allowed in an English court) and the press seem to then think that he’s broken them down when time after time, their testimony has proved consistent under cross-examination. If they’ve faltered, it’s only out of frustration and boredom as they have to repeat what they’ve said yet again because it still doesn’t match Oscar’s version.

It’s Roux’s cross that has proven inconsistent, for instance, when he purports that a neighbour would not have been able to hear shots from Pistorius’s house and then suggests to the woman’s husband that some of the sounds he heard were Pistorius trying to break the toilet door down with a cricket bat. I’m sorry – if he contends that she couldn’t hear gunfire, how does he think that her husband could have heard a cricket bat hitting a door? The reporters still insist that he’s destroyed the prosecution’s case.

Often, Roux has called upon opinions from witnesses, along the lines of ‘what did they think Pistorius was feeling’, etc.? In a British court, I’d like to think these would be rejected as conjecture, that the state would raise an objection but this never happens. He even asks the same ex-girlfriend to tell him which side of the bed Oscar would have been on when he was with Reeva. How would she know? She can only speculate.

Gerrie Nel

The Prosecution – Gerrie Nel

As far as I can tell, the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, hasn’t prepared a proper case, constructed a narrative of events or even a proper opening statement. Instead, his witnesses and questions have hopped back and forth between the different charges. I'm not sure why he's even added these - they show Pistorius's propensity for recklessness but here they simply divert attention from the killing of Reeva. At no point has he put the case as he sees it.

Now it’s moved to the defence and the cross-examination of Oscar Pistorius, it seems that the prosecutor is simply raising minor discrepancies rather than making a point, and badgering the witness, just like Roux before him. The real questions are not being asked by either attorney and the question I want to ask is why.

e.g. Why is Nel concentrating on whether Pistorius went onto the balcony or not when he has said he spoke to Reeva before he moved the fan? If he talked to her at this stage, why didn’t he address her when, in the next instant, he claims he heard a noise? Why didn’t he say ‘Did you hear that?’ In fact, a day or so later, he does finally ask this question although by then the impetus and import are lost.

Nel keeps saying that Oscar is ‘tailoring’ his evidence. What he means is that he’s embellishing it (furnishing extra details) as the case progresses. On the bail application, he heard a noise from the bathroom, by the time of the plea statement this has become the sound of a window closing and by the time he gives evidence it’s a window sliding and hitting the frame.

This seems to be a mere muddying of the waters but while he’s doing this, the case is merely treading water and not going anywhere. If we assume that he is going to come to a point somewhere down the line, the problem might be that the judge will have completely forgotten it all by then as she already seems to have trouble keeping track of who they’re talking about.

Oscar Pistorius

The Accused – Oscar Pistorius

Pistorius continually refers to ‘the accident’ that ‘happened’, or calls the killing of Reeva a ‘mistake’. A ‘mistake’ would be putting too much salt on his food; killing someone is more than a mistake. Talk about a gift for understatement. Gerrie Nel at least is rightly calling him on this, asking whether the gun went off accidentally. There’s another incident later when Oscar is asked which Valentine’s Day Reeva’s card was for and he says ‘the day when the accident happened’. He could at least acknowledge that he killed her.

But Nel hasn’t pulled him up on these two contradictory statements:1 ‘I had many thoughts’ and 2 ‘I didn’t have time to think’.

Which is it? Or these two: 1 ‘She wasn’t breathing’ as he found Reeva in the toilet and 2 ‘She was struggling to breathe’. So this means she was still alive so why didn’t he try to get help at this point? Did he wait for her to die?

Oscar has also said ‘I kneeled down’ when he was shooting. Is this a good idea when he’s on his stumps? Can he balance? I think Nel should have followed this up.

Oscar says things like ‘That’s where the firearm was pointed’ as if he had no agency in this, as if it did this by itself. Or ‘I was responsible for the firearm when the round went off’ but claims that although no one else touched it, he didn’t pull the trigger. He continually distances himself from his own actions.

What is being painted, in a pointillist style, bit by bit, piecemeal, is a portrait of a man who likes to control things, who does not relinquish control easily but still refuses to take responsibility for his actions. He won't avoid a confrontation, is not the sort to go ‘cowering and running away’. It seems impossible that he really wants to somehow come out of this a hero. However, Nel’s constant darting about between dates and incidents is as confusing for the viewer (and maybe the judge) as it is for Oscar. One minute, we’re talking about the alarm system in the house, the next about an incident in which Pistorius claims he was shot at while he was driving. I don't think this approach is helpful to anyone and may even elicit more sympathy for the accused.

The Texts

What the texts tend to illustrate is that Reeva was often unhappy with their relationship, that she might raise this but was usually conciliatory, constantly reassuring Oscar, expressing her love for him, apologising to him, defending herself, sometimes pre-emptively. His responses (he didn’t always respond) might offer an apology but inevitably follow this with an explanation that blamed her for his action in some way. It’s a type of semi-abusive behaviour that I’ve observed in my own family. Oscar has said Reeva was a strong person who would stick up for herself but his actions (criticising her in public) and the texts that resulted were a means of subtly undermining her confidence, of making her feel that she was in the wrong. I don't think that Oscar is even aware that he does this. And the sad thing is that I believe he really loved her and that’s partly why he’s emotional now. He’s crying because he feels guilty.

Thokozile Masipa

The Judge – Thokozile Masipa

The judge is pretty laidback, usually only rousing herself to check what the time is before an adjournment. You’d think they could put a clock in the courtroom. She’s been a little more proactive of late, telling someone off for not turning off their phone – cue some silly sniggering from people who should know better. But recently, she’s reprimanded Nel for calling Oscar a liar although his whole case is predicated on that fact. Unfortunately, Nel has yet to make his case, which we presume involves the couple arguing, Oscar losing his rag and eventually gunning his girlfriend down. In English courts, the attorney can and often does say ‘I put it to you that you’re lying’, etc. But what worried me is that the judge might believe that no one lies on the witness stand. If so, we’re in trouble.

The Victim – Reeva Steenkamp 

It seems that no one is speaking for Reeva. It’s impossible to imagine how terrified she must have been, how much she suffered, how she was gunned down and how savage and brutal her death was. Whenever I even try to contemplate it, I start to cry. When I hear Oscar say he was not the type to cower or run away, he knows that this is what he made her do. She was trusting, straightforward and good-natured and she tried to find the good in him. She had so much to live for. Rest in Peace, Reeva.

Reeva Steenkamp, RIP