Oscar Pistorius Trial ---- Annette VergeerGestern um 12.40:
This witness, has continued the recommendation by the previous defense witnesses that OP should be sentenced to no more than 3 years correctional supervision.
Like the previous witnesses her evidence is fatally flawed.
1. She admits that she has NOT considered OP's degree of negligence. Judge Masipa has indicated that this was high.
Culpable Homicide, involving a high degree of negligence attracts a custodial sentence, in terms of established judicial approach.
When a firearm is used this is regarded as even more serious.
So too is the fact that a woman was killed,because violence against women isnow regarded as a scourge that needs to be deterred.
2. It is also her stance that imprisonment serves no useful purpose other than to "gratuitously punish" the offender.
So she discards punishment as a legitimate objective in sentencing.
Punishment is one of the five (5) objectives in sentencing together with deterrence, retribution and rehabilitation.
Her stance that punishment needs to be discarded would apply to any offender, including serial rapists and killers.
Society has no other form of punishment, other than imprisonment. We certainly do not whip human beings any more.
If you discard punishment what then do you put in its place? Must criminals go unpunished?
The need to punish offenders is deeply ingrained in human psyche. This explains why we had an "eye for an eye" concept for so long as many still have it.
It explains why the whole world was chuffed at what happened to Bin Ladin, even though he was actually murdered in cold blood, i.e, an extra judicial killing without trial.
Eye for an eye has been "refined" to what is known as "retribution", i.e, what I call a "solemn exaltation" that the criminal has been made to pay and that justice has been done.
If people don't feel this the administration of justice WILL be brought into disrepute and some will go as far as vigilantism.
3. Correctional supervision is not punishment.
It might be punishment if I stole a chicken at Pic n' Pay ... but certainly not for killing someone with a high degree of fault. .
Oscar Pistorius Trial of the Century
Over 90% of human beings that have displayed an interest in the trial are against the verdict.
The defenders of the verdict inevitably rely on the right of the Court to decide, as a matter of fact, that OP had no intention to kill when he fired four times through the door believing that there was a human(s) behind the door, because he did not foresee that he MIGHT kill a human.
They are forced to contend that the decision is only supportable on the basis that this claimed lack of foresight on OP"s part "may reasonably, possibly be true".
Certainly there is full legal support for the proposition that a Court is constrained to accept an exculpatory explanation that "may reasonably, possibly be true", in the absence of controverting evidence.
The point that this camp and the Court, with respect, has missed is that :-
1. FIRST there actually has to be an exculpatory explanation;
2. and ONLY then does the Court examine that explanation to test if it is "reasonably possibly true".
If what is served up to the Court is no more,no less than a miss-mash of contradictory, irrational, convoluted statements that are largely incomprehensible---you don't have AN EXCULPATORY EXPLANATION.
I could write a whole tome to prove that what Oscar had to say about the shooting was more nonsensical than sentient. Nonsense can never constitute an explanation.
So in my respectful view the Court never did have an explanation that it could then determine as "reasonably possibly true"
For instance had OP stated with reasonably clarity that he covered the door with the firearm, not intending to fire unless this became necessary, but stumbled causing his elbow to hit the wall setting off a chain reaction in his arm, resulting in him firing, that would have been an explanation that could be tested for being "reasonably possibly true".
In my respectful view the Court had nothing to test except so much gobbledygook.
PS: --
Just to clarify the point of this thread.
If the situation is that you must deliver a thoroughbred bull terrier to me.
I cannot determine that what you have delivered is a thoroughbred bull terrier until you have delivered a bull terrier and, at the very least, A DOG.
Um nichts anderes geht es im Knast. Auch hierzulande nicht.Comtesse schrieb:(wobei ich eher denke, es würde sich da ruck-zuck Dank seines Geldes und der familiären Connections eine Schutzbande finden, die ihn da protegiert während seines Aufenthalts - denen, die in der Knasthierarchie das Sagen haben, geht es auch nur um Geld und Macht, nicht um Rache - da würden sie sich schon überlegen, ob sie nicht am Ende mehr davon hätten, OP als Freund zu haben statt ihn fertigzumachen)
Eben, sieht man ja auch an Hoeness.Schnaki schrieb:Um nichts anderes geht es im Knast. Auch hierzulande nicht.
