Oscar trial: jeans on duvet scrutinised
Prosecutor Gerrie Nel won his argument that a pair of Reeva Steenkamp's jeans was found lying on a duvet in his bedroom, during Oscar Pistorius's trial in the High Court in Pretoria on Friday.
FILE PICTURE: State prosecutor Gerrie Nel is seen during his cross examination of a pathologist during the Oscar Pistorius murder trial in Pretoria, Monday, 7 April 2014. Pistorius is charged with murder for the shooting death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentines Day in 2013. Picture: Themba Hadebe/AP/Pool
This helped him disprove the athlete’s claim that police officers tampered with the scene by throwing the duvet on the floor after they arrived at his Pretoria townhouse on February 14 last year.
Pistorius is accused of the murder of model and law graduate Steenkamp in his townhouse shortly after 3am that day.
He shot her through the locked door of his toilet, saying later he thought she was an intruder about to come out and attack him.
Pistorius claims he got out of bed shortly before the shooting and picked up Steenkamp’s jeans to cover a small blue LED light on his hi-fi as it was “disturbing” him.
He then heard a noise from his bathroom which he argues were intruders coming through the window there.
Nel, who was cross-examining Pistorius, showed the court two photos of Pistorius’s bedroom, showing what he argued were the jeans lying on a corner of the duvet.
“From the photo it looks as if the denim is on top, so you can proceed,” Judge Thokozile Masipa told Nel.
Confronted with this fact, Pistorius reverted to his claims of police tampering with the scene.
“I didn’t think that the denim was left there but I also know when the police photos were taken many things were moved.”
Pistorius is also charged with three contraventions of the Firearms Control Act, one of illegal possession of ammunition and two of discharging a firearm in public.
He allegedly fired a shot from a Glock pistol under a table at a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.
On September 30, 2012 he allegedly shot through the open sunroof of a car with his 9mm pistol while driving with friends in Modderfontein.
Pistorius has denied guilt on all the charges.
– Sapa
