The Strange Case of Oscar Pistorius and the Detective
“There goes my case,” Gerrie Nel, the prosecutor handling murder charges against Oscar Pistorius, said, according to the Guardian, as the detective Hilton Botha walked into the courtroom Thursday. He didn’t mean that in a good way. On Wednesday, Nel had called Botha to the stand to describe the crime scene in the house where Pistorius shot his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, through a closed bathroom door. (He says he thought she was a burglar.) Only afterward, Nel said, did he learn that Botha himself was facing seven charges of attempted murder for shooting into a closed van. (He says he thought a fleeing suspect was trying to push him off the road.) The charges against Botha had been dropped, but were recently reinstated—exactly how recently is an interesting question, but reportedly before the shooting. Still, Botha told a South African television reporter, “I can only think this is linked to my work on Oscar Pistorius.” (He added, “I wasn’t drunk.”) Given the quality of that work—based on his testimony, it looks bungled—one almost wonders which side would have an interest in keeping him at it.
At any rate, Botha is now off the case. It’s
been given to Police Lieutenant General Vineshkumar Moonoo. At a press
conference called after a day that included the courtroom being cleared
because of a threat, a woman with a plastic bag shouting that she had a
“constitutional” motion to file, and Pistorius starting to cry, a police
official described Moonoo as South Africa’s “top detective.”
Everything moves fast with Pistorius—including the speed with which the case against him turned into a smashup of strange behavior. (Naturally, Fox News has already turned to Mark Fuhrman, the detective who played the red herring in the O. J. Simpson case, for comment.) So far, the defense lawyer, Barry Roux, has been the one to emphasize things like the fact that, for example, Botha tramped into the house without covers on his shoes—but those types of things could cut both ways. Police came to the house after Reeva Steenkamp was killed, but so did private security and a clutch of Pistorius’s relatives. According to press reports, the catalogue of objects whose precise location seemed murky includes a memory stick that may or may not have had information about an offshore account, a handful of .38-calibre bullets, and Steenkamp’s phone. (Why was it found on a bath mat, next to the 9-mm. pistol she was shot with?) Botha’s train wreck of a testimony yesterday included confusion about just how many phones were still in the house (the defense said that it was holding onto one that the detective hadn’t bothered to ask for). On Thursday, Botha said that he still didn’t have hard copies of the phone records—crucial because of possible texts to or from Steenkamp, and for establishing whom Pistorius called for help, and when. Botha said that he’d asked a guy he knew, who was usually pretty fast, to get them, but that the guy had to go to Cape Town. And that wasn’t as bad as the moment when Botha amended his earlier claim that vials found in Pistorius’s house contained steroids, saying that they actually contained testosterone, before finally conceding that he hadn’t actually read the whole label, and maybe the name just started with “testo.” (The defense says it’s a legal herbal remedy; it doesn’t seem to have been tested yet.)
Is that how the South African police operate? If this is the way the death of a well-known, well-connected, model and law graduate is handled, what’s it like for any woman whose body is found and whose boyfriend says it was an accident? Pistorius’s lawyer has suggested that the police were out to get him, and maybe someone wants to make their name with this case. Maybe it was a terrible accident and people are being unkind—although, as Nel pointed out, even by Pistorius’s own account he shot into an enclosed space to kill without wondering if Steenkamp was inside. (“There are two people in the house and you hear a noise. Do you immediately assume it’s a burglar and not the person next to you?”) He tried to recover from Botha’s testimony by focussing on the ways in which Pistorius’s story, laid out in an affidavit, simply didn’t make sense. (Lydia Polgreen has a good summary.) But the police have made it harder for there to be justice, one way or the other. The real victim of their carelessness is Reeva Steenkamp.
Reading accounts of the proceedings, one wonders how much expertise South African investigators and courts actually have in dealing with cases of violence against women, even though, as Charlayne Hunter-Gault has written, the number of attacks is unsettlingly high. (When Botha shot into that van, he was reportedly looking for the killer of a woman who had been dismembered, her body parts left in a drain.) When Roux asked Botha if there was any evidence contradicting Pistorius’s account, Botha said that he guessed there wasn’t—not that forensic tests and examinations were still under way. Are there cases for which the police might not even have bothered with them?
Botha’s testimony was bad in so many ways that, on Thursday, Nair asked if the fact that he had spoken in English was a problem, since Afrikaans is his first language. Botha said that he could manage. At another point, Nel read out loud in Afrikaans from a magazine article in which Pistorius is quoted speaking happily about his house in Italy—a house that his lawyer had emphatically denied existed. (He may just have it on loan.) Like the memory stick with financial information, the discrepancy spoke to whether Pistorius was a flight risk—this was, after all, a bail hearing. The magistrate, who should have a decision Friday, seemed less concerned that Pistorius would skip town than that he might use his freedom to influence witnesses—there was testimony that in another incident, he had accidently fired a gun through a restaurant table and tried to persuade someone else to take the blame. South Africa is not the only place still sorting out ideas of privilege, assumptions about security, guns, and where one turns for help. Pistorius’s lawyer spoke mockingly about the idea that a man who had no lower legs would have anywhere to run, or could do much far away from home. But hasn’t Pistorius’s whole career proved that the opposite is true?
Photograph, of Hilton Botha, by Sizwe Ndingane/Getty.
Everything moves fast with Pistorius—including the speed with which the case against him turned into a smashup of strange behavior. (Naturally, Fox News has already turned to Mark Fuhrman, the detective who played the red herring in the O. J. Simpson case, for comment.) So far, the defense lawyer, Barry Roux, has been the one to emphasize things like the fact that, for example, Botha tramped into the house without covers on his shoes—but those types of things could cut both ways. Police came to the house after Reeva Steenkamp was killed, but so did private security and a clutch of Pistorius’s relatives. According to press reports, the catalogue of objects whose precise location seemed murky includes a memory stick that may or may not have had information about an offshore account, a handful of .38-calibre bullets, and Steenkamp’s phone. (Why was it found on a bath mat, next to the 9-mm. pistol she was shot with?) Botha’s train wreck of a testimony yesterday included confusion about just how many phones were still in the house (the defense said that it was holding onto one that the detective hadn’t bothered to ask for). On Thursday, Botha said that he still didn’t have hard copies of the phone records—crucial because of possible texts to or from Steenkamp, and for establishing whom Pistorius called for help, and when. Botha said that he’d asked a guy he knew, who was usually pretty fast, to get them, but that the guy had to go to Cape Town. And that wasn’t as bad as the moment when Botha amended his earlier claim that vials found in Pistorius’s house contained steroids, saying that they actually contained testosterone, before finally conceding that he hadn’t actually read the whole label, and maybe the name just started with “testo.” (The defense says it’s a legal herbal remedy; it doesn’t seem to have been tested yet.)
Is that how the South African police operate? If this is the way the death of a well-known, well-connected, model and law graduate is handled, what’s it like for any woman whose body is found and whose boyfriend says it was an accident? Pistorius’s lawyer has suggested that the police were out to get him, and maybe someone wants to make their name with this case. Maybe it was a terrible accident and people are being unkind—although, as Nel pointed out, even by Pistorius’s own account he shot into an enclosed space to kill without wondering if Steenkamp was inside. (“There are two people in the house and you hear a noise. Do you immediately assume it’s a burglar and not the person next to you?”) He tried to recover from Botha’s testimony by focussing on the ways in which Pistorius’s story, laid out in an affidavit, simply didn’t make sense. (Lydia Polgreen has a good summary.) But the police have made it harder for there to be justice, one way or the other. The real victim of their carelessness is Reeva Steenkamp.
Reading accounts of the proceedings, one wonders how much expertise South African investigators and courts actually have in dealing with cases of violence against women, even though, as Charlayne Hunter-Gault has written, the number of attacks is unsettlingly high. (When Botha shot into that van, he was reportedly looking for the killer of a woman who had been dismembered, her body parts left in a drain.) When Roux asked Botha if there was any evidence contradicting Pistorius’s account, Botha said that he guessed there wasn’t—not that forensic tests and examinations were still under way. Are there cases for which the police might not even have bothered with them?
Botha’s testimony was bad in so many ways that, on Thursday, Nair asked if the fact that he had spoken in English was a problem, since Afrikaans is his first language. Botha said that he could manage. At another point, Nel read out loud in Afrikaans from a magazine article in which Pistorius is quoted speaking happily about his house in Italy—a house that his lawyer had emphatically denied existed. (He may just have it on loan.) Like the memory stick with financial information, the discrepancy spoke to whether Pistorius was a flight risk—this was, after all, a bail hearing. The magistrate, who should have a decision Friday, seemed less concerned that Pistorius would skip town than that he might use his freedom to influence witnesses—there was testimony that in another incident, he had accidently fired a gun through a restaurant table and tried to persuade someone else to take the blame. South Africa is not the only place still sorting out ideas of privilege, assumptions about security, guns, and where one turns for help. Pistorius’s lawyer spoke mockingly about the idea that a man who had no lower legs would have anywhere to run, or could do much far away from home. But hasn’t Pistorius’s whole career proved that the opposite is true?
Photograph, of Hilton Botha, by Sizwe Ndingane/Getty.
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