In the original Oscar Pistorius case I was struck by the colloquial nature of the language used by both the defence and prosecution lawyers and the rather homily nature of the Lady Judge. She seemed diminutive and rather than representing the State with its assumption of having the final word she was in my opinion too sotto voce.
Given that her ruling, which also astonished me, that he had committed 'manslaughter' rather than murder, even though admitting firing his powerful gun repeatedly through a door into a room so small, the chance of his bullets missing who ever was in the room was unlikely.
I was also surprised that the same Judge was again sitting in charge of the court, to deliberate on a matter which she had deemed not to have taken place. Surely she must be prejudiced.
The esteemed, highly certified 'clinical psychologist' has just run through a long list of clinical rationality, dealing with the in's and out's of the human mental condition. We all fit a profile and in many ways, other than the deformity he had suffered much of what we heard would fit many ordinary people.
The psychologist is in the business of analysis, separating the minutia of what the layman would call "life" and the events we experience and cope with every day, by providing each aspect with a weighting and an importance that is technical and to my mind questionable. In my opinion one aspect in isolation is countered and coped with by other counter posed experiences. The mind is continually balancing its opinion on a range of matters and we do justice a disfavour when we itemise things in the way the clinical psychologist is currently doing in court.
Of course it is a strategy to limit his sentence but in seeking to highlight his "contrition" for does not explain how a man could unload so many bullets into the small bathroom other than the "conditioning" which has occurred within South Africa towards life and the prejudice within the nation towards its fellow citizens. Values were eroded within the Apartheid era and have become even more eroded as crime has escalated. The shoot first psychology which scars America has its reflection in South Africa where the assumption that I am not only at risk but my oppressor does not have the rights I would wish for myself, makes it open season in the killing field that much of society has now become..
This was sadly revealed yesterday in Orlando when someone feels it right to unleash shot after shot into a crowd of unarmed people, people who he felt were lessor people in that they were gay and somehow, it was his mission to kill them.
It's also interesting how my remark against the psychological evidence, that in it's too forensic and misses the big picture, is equally placed at the foot of the lawyer who disentangles the overall meaning of a sentence and deciphers each word into is specific meaning, a meaning which taken out of context can mean one of many things. The Prosecutor immediately turned on the expert witness in his interpretation of whether, in his interview with Pistorius, Pistorius had redefined his acknowledgement of firing his gun at the door and admitted the implication that he 'knew' he would kill who ever was behind the door.
The psychologist had been trying to impress on the court Pistorius's remorse for his actions but it was argued, Pistorius had never spelt out in detail his understanding of the causal chain for which he was responsible.
Words and testimony, meanings and subterfuge are the ingredients which the legal system use in their baking of the cake. Their ability, to throw out a 'verbal aside' which like a bear-trap lies in wait to snap shut on a careless foot fall.
But is this justice or merely verbal gymnastics.
Is in fact 'truth' served by a clever lawyer or are we all the worse off by professional competence, as we are when a team of accountants screw the HMRC.
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