PRETORIA, South Africa — The judge
presiding over the trial of Oscar Pistorius,
the Paralympic athlete, cleared him of the
two most serious murder charges against
him on Thursday. But then, after appearing
to be on the verge of declaring Mr. Pistorius
guilty of a lesser crime, culpable homicide,
in the shooting death of his girlfriend, the
judge abruptly suspended court proceedings
for the rest of the day.
“We’ll have to stop here and resume
tomorrow morning,” the judge, Thokozile
Matilda Masipa, said less than half an hour
after the session had resumed after a lunch
break. She did not explain the adjournment.
In three hours of detailed appraisal of a trial
that has transfixed many around the world
and that has been compared to the O. J.
Simpson case in the United States, Judge
Masipa cleared Mr. Pistorius of two charges
— premeditated murder, which carries a
minimum mandatory term of 25 years, and a
lesser charge of homicide known simply as
“murder.”
Judge Masipa then turned to the lesser
charge of culpable homicide, which is
comparable to involuntary manslaughter,
and said Mr. Pistorius had failed three tests
to be exonerated of the charge. One
considers what a “reasonable” person would
have done under the same circumstances.
Since his trial opened in March, Mr.
Pistorius, 27, a double amputee who has also
challenged able-bodied runners, has faced
accusations that he deliberately took the life
of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, 29, when
he fired into a locked bathroom door at his
villa in Pretoria, the South African capital,
on Feb. 14, 2013. Mr. Pistorius has insisted
that he killed Ms. Steenkamp, who was in
the bathroom, by mistake, believing that an
intruder had entered his home.
Pointedly, the judge compared Mr.
Pistorius’s reaction and behavior to that of
the majority of people in South Africa who
live under daily threat of crime. “Many
people in this country have experienced
crime, but they have not resorted to sleeping
with a firearm under their pillow,” she said.
Mr. Pistorius, who lives in a gated complex
with round-the-clock guards, has said he
became alarmed when he heard what he
thought was the sound of a bathroom
window being opened. “All the accused had
to do was to pick up his cellphone and call
security or the police,” the judge said,
finding that Mr. Pistorius “acted too hastily,”
“used excessive force” and had been
negligent in his conduct.
At that point, with many observers in the
courtroom forecasting that she was about to
deliver her judgment, she adjourned the
hearing until Friday.
Earlier, calmly and coolly taking up piece
after piece of evidence, dismissing some,
discounting others, offering practical
interpretations of still more, Judge Masipa
said that although Mr. Pistorius made a poor
and evasive witness, she found large parts of
his story credible. Most significantly, she
said it seemed — or at least that the
prosecution had been unable to prove
otherwise — that when he shot and killed
Ms. Steenkamp, he genuinely believed that
intruders had broken into his home and
were hiding in the bathroom at the time.
Sitting in the dock in a dark suit, white shirt
and black tie, Mr. Pistorius slumped forward
and sobbed as the judge cleared him of the
two murder charges.
There are no jury trials in South Africa, so it
has been left to Judge Masipa, with the help
of two aides, to render the verdict on her
own. According to normal procedures in the
country, the judgment includes a summation
of the facts, an analysis of the evidence, and
then the announcement of the verdict,
charge after charge.
Judge Masipa also dismissed out of hand
large portions of the prosecution’s evidence,
in particular the testimony of neighbors who
said they had heard the sounds of a man
and woman arguing in Mr. Pistorius’s house
before the shots were fired. And she said
prosecution evidence culled from cellphone
text messages and meant to demonstrate
that Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp’s
relationship was “on the rocks,” as she put
it, could not be considered relevant. Nor, she
said, could seemingly contradictory text
message evidence from the defense meant to
show that the couple had a loving
relationship be helpful in reaching a verdict.
“In my view, none of this evidence, from the
state or defense, proves anything,” she said.
“Normal relationships are dynamic and
unpredictable sometimes.”
In being acquitted of the two harshest
charges against him, Mr. Pistorius could
have escaped a lengthy prison sentence. But
culpable homicide, which is defined as the
negligent killing of another person, can carry
a wide range of sentences, at the discretion
of the judge, from no jail time to more than
15 years in prison.
The judge’s partial verdict was a huge
setback for the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel , who
had called for Mr. Pistorius to be convicted
of murder and whose pugnacious courtroom
manner earned him the nickname the Pit
Bull.
In his version of the shooting, Mr. Pistorius
has described walking on the stumps of his
legs in a darkened passageway, with a
handgun thrust out before him, before he
opened fire on a locked bathroom door.
When he broke down the door with a cricket
bat, he said, he discovered the bloodstained
body of Ms. Steenkamp.
“ 'Before I knew it, I had fired four shots at
the door,' ” Judge Masipa quoted Mr.
Pistorius as saying, as she listed the various
ways he described the shooting during the
trial. At times, he said he shot “in the belief
that the intruders were coming out” to
attack him. At other moments, he said he
“never intended to shoot anyone” and had
not fired deliberately at the door, the judge
said. Part of Mr. Pistorius’s evidence, she
said, was “inconsistent with someone who
shot without thinking.”
Ms. Steenkamp, Judge Masipa added, “was
killed under very peculiar circumstances,”
but “what is not conjecture is that the
accused armed himself with a loaded
firearm.”
Nonetheless, the judge ruled, the
prosecution’s evidence to support a charge
of premeditated murder was “purely
circumstantial.”
“The state clearly has not proved beyond
reasonable doubt that the accused is guilty
of premeditated murder,” she said. “There
are not enough facts.”
Much of the trial, with 41 days of testimony
since it opened, has revolved around Mr.
Pistorius’s state of mind and intentions when
he opened fire. During cross-examination in
April , Mr. Pistorius sobbed, wailed and
retched as he recalled the events
surrounding Ms. Steenkamp’s death.
While the judge said she accepted that Mr.
Pistorius would feel vulnerable because of
his disability, he had been “a very poor
witness” and had been evasive and “lost his
composure” under cross-examination.
Until the killing, Mr. Pistorius, who had
challenged able-bodied runners only months
earlier at the London Summer Olympics in
2012, seemed to be reveling in a glittery
career of sporting success and celebrity
acclaim.
As the trial unfolded, the defense and the
prosecution offered Jekyll-and-Hyde
depictions of Mr. Pistorius’s character.
The prosecutor, Mr. Nel, described him as
trigger-happy, mendacious, narcissistic and
prone to rage. By contrast, the lead defense
lawyer, Barry Roux, sought to present him
as anxious, vulnerable and fearful of South
Africa’s violent crime, laboring under the
psychological burden of growing up with a
disability. Mr. Pistorius was born without
fibula bones in his legs, and both were
amputated below the knee when he was 11
months old.
In part, the trial has been held up as
evidence of a dramatic reversal of South
Africa’s white-dominated apartheid-era legal
system. In 1998, four years after South
Africa’s first democratic election, Judge
Masipa , who turned 66 on Thursday, became
only the second black female judge to be
appointed to the High Court. Born in a poor
township, she had been a social worker and
newspaper journalist before studying law at
the height of the apartheid era. Now, under
South African judicial protocols, lawyers and
witnesses are obliged to address her with
the honorific “My Lady.”
But the trial has also highlighted the
country’s continued racial preoccupations
and its high levels of crime against women.
In other cases, Judge Masipa has handed
down tough sentences in cases of rape and
violence against women.
Mr. Pistorius also faces three counts relating
to firearms offenses.
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