Domestic abuse escalates to murder all too often.
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
-9 points (34.5% liked)
Unpopular Opinion
6295 readers
412 users here now
Welcome to the Unpopular Opinion community!
How voting works:
Vote the opposite of the norm.
If you agree that the opinion is unpopular give it an arrow up. If it's something that's widely accepted, give it an arrow down.
Guidelines:
Tag your post, if possible (not required)
- If your post is a "General" unpopular opinion, start the subject with [GENERAL].
- If it is a Lemmy-specific unpopular opinion, start it with [LEMMY].
Rules:
1. NO POLITICS
Politics is everywhere. Let's make this about [general] and [lemmy] - specific topics, and keep politics out of it.
2. Be civil.
Disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally attack others. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Please also refrain from gatekeeping others' opinions.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Shitposts and memes are allowed but...
Only until they prove to be a problem. They can and will be removed at moderator discretion.
5. No trolling.
This shouldn't need an explanation. If your post or comment is made just to get a rise with no real value, it will be removed. You do this too often, you will get a vacation to touch grass, away from this community for 1 or more days. Repeat offenses will result in a perma-ban.
Instance-wide rules always apply. https://legal.lemmy.world/tos/
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Sure, but the prosecution had no evidence that Pistorius had abused Steenkamp, or anyone. Only that she'd been shot by him though an opaque door.
She was shot through an interior door by a man who previously abused her, shortly after a fight.
It’s really not hard to explain unless you need to make Pistorius look innocent.
Right, except that both the "abuse" and the "fight" were just speculation by the prosecutor. There was no evidence of either.
In any case the crime as proposed by the prosecutors never made any sense: someone actually intent on murder doesn't put a door in the way.
Hiding in the bathroom is what a someone fleeing a violent boyfriend would do.
The entirety of this opinion is also just speculation, no?
I don't think that it is, no. The law, of course, does work differently in South Africa but in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with, "well it could have happened" isn't a basis on which you can secure conviction beyond reasonable doubt.
-
Easy excuse to make, hard to rebut.
-
You don't need a motive, it just helps and could have helped cast doubt on #1.
-
If there's no reason to risk it if you're trying to murder your girlfriend there's no reason to risk it against an attacker.
I don't really care about this case all that much. All of the unknowns make it confounding more than interesting.
If there's no reason to risk it if you're trying to murder your girlfriend there's no reason to risk it against an attacker.
No, that's clearly untrue. That's quite easy to rebut:
-
If you're trying to murder your girlfriend, you know you have the advantage because you're catching her by surprise. People are pretty shocked when you pull a gun and shoot them. You don't need the door to be in the picture, because you know you have the only gun in the house. You don't want the door in the picture because having attempted the crime, you have to succeed or you're toast. So you don't want a door in the way, messing up your aim.
-
If you believe you've been caught by surprise by an invading attacker, then you do want your own advantages, especially as a double amputee who can't sleep with his legs on. They may have brought a gun. They may not know you have one. You want to catch them by surprise if you can, and it actually doesn't matter if you shoot and miss because it's just as good to drive them off as it is to hit them. You want to fire through the door because that's an advantaged position.
I don't think there are actually any unknowns, here. Pistorius fired on someone he mistakenly thought was invading his home after a string of such invasions in the neighborhood. As a double amputee he figured he was in a particularly poor position to wrestle with an able-bodied attacker, so he denied the "attacker" the chance to go for the gun. Firing a gun without eyes on the target might very well constitute legal recklessness, but I'm not sure Pistorius had good reason to believe he was in a position to exercise that diligence. Despite the fact that he's a Paralympian, he's actually in a worse position than almost everyone when it comes to defending himself from violence.
You're doing a lot of mental gymnastics to make this make sense from an accidental perspective. You've made up your mind that it was a mistaken intruder.
Me, personally? I have no clue whether he did or didn't. And considering only he can know that for sure, I think that's the only reasonable conclusion you can draw.
I certainly have no interest in debating all of these hypothetical motives he could have had.
You've made up your mind that it was a mistaken intruder.
Yes, on the basis of what I know about the crime it's extremely obvious that he shot what he mistook as an intruder, and extremely obvious that he did not engage in a plot to murder his girlfriend for no known reason.
But note that I don't actually have to believe this to conclude that his conviction was unjust. Conviction must result from belief in his guilt beyond reasonable doubt, and since his explanation is exculpatory of murder, if you can't rebut it beyond reasonable doubt, you cannot convict. Defendants in trials are the ones afforded benefit of the doubt, not prosecutors.
And considering only he can know that for sure, I think that's the only reasonable conclusion you can draw.
Right, but then you agree with my position; it was unjust for him to have been convicted of murder because we can't possibly know that he committed murder.
I certainly have no interest in debating all of these hypothetical motives he could have had.
I have no intention of requiring you to. But motive is a necessity for the crime of murder, because murder is the intentional killing of a person, and motive goes to intent.
Definitely an unpopular opinion!