State's Appeal Against Pistorius Murder Acquittal Allowed

In a welcome move, at least for those of us who had serious concerns about how Judge Masipa dealt with dolus eventualis in the Oscar Pistorius judgment (see my previous blog post on the matter here), Judge Masipa has permitted the State's appeal, which will now be heard in front of the South African Supreme Court.

To recap, in a nutshell, without making it clear in her judgment why and on what grounds, Masipa J. had to have accepted that Oscar Pistorius did not foresee that firing four bullets through a closed toilet door risked causing the death of the person behind the door. You don't have to be a lawyer to see the problem with that (though the lawyers out there may note that the State got a lucky break that the Honourable Judge didn't explain her reasoning fully in the original judgment, for if she had perversity could well have been the only avenue available for the appeal, and that is a very difficult bar to get over. As it is, Masipa J. accepted that it is a point of law as to whether she correctly applied the principle of dolus eventualis to the facts.)

The Guardian's liveblog of the original judgment had a useful explanation of what happened:

Read the State's grounds for appeal below.

  State papers for Oscar Pistorius sentencing appeal by eNCA.com

The Pistorius defence

I would appreciate comment from any lawyerly folks out there.

I haven't been following the Pistorius trial very closely (hardly at all), but is it just me or are the media getting somewhat mixed up by the fact that he appears to be trying to argue, in two completely different ways, that there was not the necessary intent to be convicted of murder?  ("I fired the gun accidentally" [no intent] and "I intentionally fired the gun mistakenly believing that there was an intruder behind the door" [putative/mistaken self-defence]).

The fact that the media seem to be quite confused by it indicates how it might work as a trial strategy in front of a jury, but it is hardly going to wash in front of the Honourable judge.

Consider this from the BBC's Andrew Harding: "He knows that he could be cleared of deliberately killing Reeva Steenkamp, but still be found guilty of intentionally murdering "someone" behind a closed door."

That's not right at all, and Harding is mixing up transferred intent and the victim.  There aren't two murder charges - if without a lawful defence he deliberately fired at "someone" through a closed door that resulted in the death of Reeva Steenkamp then he is guilty of the murder of Reeva Steenkamp.