Pistorius: Trial Of The Century?
Updated: 1:20pm UK, Friday 12 September 2014
By Martin Brunt, Crime Correspondent, in Pretoria
The live television coverage of the Oscar Pistorius trial has exposed a slow and sometimes bizarre criminal justice system and some shoddy policing.
It has allowed the two principal lawyers to showboat and frighten witnesses into choosing not to be seen on camera.
And it was unable to stop grim images of the victim's shattered head being flashed on screen.
But most here believe the bold decision to let cameras into a South African court for the first time was the right one.
It has allowed justice to be seen to be done, a right that's been denied to most of the population in this fledgling democracy where, for so many years, justice was colour blind.
The judge deciding the Olympic athlete's guilt or innocence is a former tea girl from the Soweto township.
When Thokozile Masipa became a judge at the age of 43 she was only the second black woman to do so.
But she has presided over a trial that's been excruciatingly embarrassing at times.
It was supposed to last three weeks, but has limped on in fits and starts for six months and a tougher judge might have clamped down on the delays.
She has also, in some observers' views, allowed the principal lawyers, prosecutor Gerrie Nel and defence barrister Barry Roux, to play to the gallery.
There has been no jury to sway, so who else can their showboating have been aimed at but the television audience?
And Nel's mocking and goading of Pistorius in his cross-examination was courtroom behaviour that would never be tolerated in the Old Bailey or any British court.
But, oddly, the judge suddenly one day reprimanded the prosecutor for calling Pistorius a liar.
The whole trial was predicated on the prosecution's belief that the defendant was lying. If Mr Nel thought Pistorius was telling the truth, there would not have been a trial.
The witness translation was sometimes laughable, with interpreters translating from Afrikaans into English which was their third language.
So poor was it that some witnesses who had chosen to speak in Afrikaans gave up and delivered the rest of their testimony in often perfect English.
Cross-examination of police witnesses revealed some shoddy detective work.
An officer who handled a gun without gloves, a door that was kept in a senior detective's office instead of contamination-free storage, and a valuable watch that appeared to have been stolen from Pistorius' house in the early hours of the investigation.
Seemingly important evidence introduced early on, but never revisited.
The court was shown photographs of blood splatter on the wall above Oscar's bed and a bullet hole in a door frame.
The images hinted at a fight, but that was the first and last we saw or heard of them.
And the defence promised we would hear sound test recordings that would demonstrate that Oscar Pistorius screams like a woman. The recordings were never played.
For all its delays, faults, inconsistencies and omissions, few people who have followed the Oscar Pistorius trial could argue that it was wrong to televise it live.
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