The Oscar Pistorius trial: ‘Today is a good day to tell you that I love you’ Reeva
“Roses are red, violets are blue. Today is a good day to tell you that … I love you.” That was the text in a Valentine’s Day card that Reeva Steenkamp wrote to her boyfriend, Oscar Pistorius, hours before he shot and killed her.
It was the last piece of evidence heard as the Paralympic athlete completed a harrowing week of testimony on Tuesday, wrapping up the central chapter of a sensational murder trial.
As a shellshocked Pistorius stepped down from the witness box, the court exhaled its collective breath and relief was written on the faces of his watching family. A man once launded for his sporting achievements – the first amputee to run in the Olympics – had discovered how harsh the flipside of celebrity can be.
Many following the trial on television and Twitter have now turned against him. Goaded, taunted and tormented by the prosecution, Pistorius was perhaps his own worst enemy during cross-examination, suffering surprising memory lapses and appearing evasive, agitated, petulant and self-contradictory. In particular, his explanation of why he pulled the trigger by “accident” mutated often and never solidified.
But some believe that prosecutor Gerrie Nel, while remorselessly attacking Pistorius’s claim that he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder, never quite established a motive or landed a knockout punch. As the trial enters its final phase, the athlete’s legal team will go all out in an attempt to sow reasonable doubt over his guilt.
The fightback began immediately after the cross-examination. Defence counsel Barry Roux asked Pistorius about a Valentine’s card that Steenkamp had intended to give him on 14 February 2013, the day she died.
The 27-year-old accused said: “The envelope says ‘Ozzie’, with some hearts and a squiggle, and then it says on the front of the card: ‘Roses are red, violets are blue.’ Then on the inside she wrote the date on the left, then on the right she said: ‘I think today is a good day to tell you that … I love you.'” It was signed ‘Reeves’, with a smiley face and three kisses.
The timing of Steenkamp’s death has always been seen a poignant element in a case already replete with noirish twists. On 13 February the blonde model had tweeted: “What do you have up your sleeve for your love tomorrow??? #getexcited #ValentinesDay.”
The Valentine’s card was an ace kept up the sleeve of the defence in ripsote to Nel’s assertion that Pistorius was bullying and narcissistic and argued with Steenkamp shortly before murdering her. Last week the prosecution highlighted WhatsApp messages between the couple that showed they never used the words “I love you” to one another.
But the defence has many more hills to climb. Winding up his cross-examination, Nel put the state’s case in a nutshell for the first time. He said Steenkamp ate around two hours before her death, when the couple had an argument that was heard by a neighbour. She locked herself in the toilet and screamed. Pistorius then took his pistol and fired through the door as the two talked, even changing his aim when she fell backwards inside the cubicle.
Earlier Nel had forced Pistorius to relive the shooting one last time in an attempt to make him accept responsibility. “We said we should blame you for taking her life,” Nel said. “Who should we blame for you having shot her? We should blame somebody … Should we blame Reeva for not telling you she was going to the toilet?”
“No, my lady,” Pistorius told judge Thokozile Masipa.
Nel asked: “Should we blame the government?” – an unusually explicit political reference to Pistorius’s fears of crime in South Africa and claim that the police never helped his family. Pistorius replied: “I believed there was a threat.”
Nel pressed: “But we cannot blame you for having shot and killed Reeva?”
Again Pistorius insisted: “I believed there was someone coming out to attack me.”
Nel then made reference to the lethally expanding bullets that he fired four times: “Who should we blame for the Black Talon rounds that ripped through her body?”
Pistorius explained it was the type of ammunition used in his firearm.
Asked about the moments when he broke down the toilet door and found Steenkamp, a tearful Pistorius recalled: “I was broken, I was overcome, filled with sadness.” He said he told his girlfriend: “‘Baby, please hold on. Jesus, please help me.’ I was praying for her.”
Pistorius remained in the witness box while Roux asked him to describe his thoughts and emotions in the seconds before he shot at the door.
“I was terrified,” Pistorius said. “I feared for my life. I was just scared. I was thinking about what could happen to me, to Reeva. I was just extremely fearful.”
Pistorius has remained vague on whether he consciously pulled the trigger in self-defence or if it went off involuntarily. “I didn’t think about pulling the trigger,” he said. “As soon as I heard the noise, I pulled the trigger.”
Roux said: “But you pulled the trigger?”
Pistorius replied: “That’s correct.”
Pistorius also stood in the middle of the court re-enacting the moment that he struck the toilet door with a cricket bat to reach Steenkamp. He said he was “heartbroken” when he first saw Steenkamp’s body. “I crouched down over her … and I checked to see if she was breathing or if she had a pulse,” he said.
Surprisingly, after six days of gruelling testimony, Pistorius’s re-examination by Roux lasted only eight minutes. Some may feel this was to prevent him doing himself yet more damage in a trial that has walked a perilous line between legal education and voyeuristic entertainment.
William Booth, a lawyer and analyst, said: “I don’t think Oscar did particularly well. He’s a poor witness. He didn’t answer questions and he gave long, rambling answers. He contradicted himself.”
But he added: “Even if he’s a poor witness, is he a lying witness? For a conviction, the judge has to reject his version as false and find the state’s case proven beyond a reasonable doubt.”
Source: The Guardian UK
