Sky News is covering, live each day from 8.30am, the trial of Oscar Pistorius for the murder a year ago of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. It is making compulsive viewing.
The South African non-jury system has a judge sitting alone, with two assessors and the three contributing to the judgment process. This has the value of a solidly objective and experienced ‘reception committee’ unlikely to be swayed by tactics playing to the emotions.
In the Pretoria courtroom, Judge Thokozile Masipa is a fascinating figure – tiny, still, composed, focused, thoughtful, quiet – parading no authority but possessed of it in full measure.
The adversarial senior counsels are Gerrie Nel for the prosecution and Barry Roux for the defence. Sky News is employing the South African criminal attorney, Llewllyn Curlewis, as its adviser and specialist commentator. His regular contributions, giving insights in to South African law and into the progress of the trial make good listening.
The trial had a tightly focused and informative start with the presentation of the prosecution case; followed by a few days largely of meandering ‘character’ evidence from the defence, with Pistorius on the stand to a running accompaniment of his own sobbing.
On Tuesday, the trial got some steel in its spine with the start of the cross examination of Pistorius by Gerrie Nel.
He immediately brought the trial back on track by reminding both Pistorius and the court that the focus was the undisputed fact that Reeva Steenkamp was ‘shot and killed’ by the paralympian athlete.
Nel is rated as one of the best legal minds in South Africa and his performance testifies to that. Sharp, quick, no-fluffing around, to the point – mercilessly in charge of the facts and a skilled interrogator, the British bar has nothing to match him.
Watching him is an education in what good analysis is about.
Yesterday, Nel’s first full day of cross-examination, is the first that Pistorius has managed to complete.Today is likely to see Pistorius’ narrative of the sequence around Reeva Steenkamp’s shooting come under severe and very precise testing.
