What seemed to be unfathomable 18 months now appears to be a real possibility: Oscar Pistorius may not serve any time in prison for the shooting death of girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Prosecution makes hollow plea for 10-year sentence for Oscar Pistorius?
It also appears that prosecutor Gerrie Nel should have hired some journalists to dig up evidence against Pistorius. His team failed to get a premeditated murder condition on what appeared on the surface to be an open-and-shut case.
In the early morning hours of Valentine's Day, 2013, Pistorius got up in the middle of the night, drew a gun and fired four shots into the couple's bathroom door, hitting Steenkamp three times and killing her.
Oscar Pistorius fortunate he was in South Africa when he shot Reeva Steenkamp?
How he failed to determine whether Steenkamp was behind the door remains the most problematic issue in his defense.
But consider other reports that came out against Pistorius during the lengthy trial (of which Sports World News reported):
- He is accused of trying to pick up a Steenkamp look-alike at a party he wasn't invited to just 52 days after Steenkamp's death.
- He got into an altercation with a man at a nightclub in July, witnesses saying Pistorius was drunk.
- He talked to an ex-lover on the phone the evening before the fateful shooting; his brother then was accused of erasing the information from the phone.
- Judge Thokozile Masipa found Pistorius' testimony to be less than forthright.
- Steenkamp flushed the toilet before Pistorius shot her.
- Pistorius was found to be competent after a 30-day psychological evaluation.
Nel asked for a sentence of at least 10 years, saying the Steenkamp family was shattered by her death and that society "would be happy" with that sentence.
The prosecutor repeatedly cited Pistorius' lump-sum monetary offer to Steenkamp's parents as an attempt to influence them, but that only served to bring up the fact that June and Barry Steenkamp mystifyingly accepted monthly payments from Pistorius from March, 2013-September 2014.
Nel argued that the Steenkamps have since promised to pay back the money, as if that were an acceptable rationale as to why they would possibly accept money from their daughter's killer in the first place.
Do you blame the prosecution in the Oscar Pistorius trial for the failure to get a murder conviction? Comment below or tell us @SportsWN.
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