Forensic pathologist testifies – Oscar trial

This was his lawyer Barry Roux’s opening gambit, designed to throw doubt on the State’s evidence that Steenkamp’s last meal was probably around two hours before Pistorius shot her dead on February 14 after 3am contradicting his bail statement that they went to bed at 10pm the night before.

Retired pathologist Jan Botha said: “It is a highly controversial and inexact science.”

He said studies on which theories were based usually used a porridge-like substance, which was unlike most modern meals.

Studies suggest that a light meal takes about two to three hours to digest, a medium meal five hours and a heavy meal significantly longer. Emptying depends on factors that include calories and psychological factors.

Steenkamp’s stomach contents, as described by the State’s pathologist Gert Saayman, included vegetable matter and a white cheese-like substance.

Botha said that since a recent Canadian study, the use of gastric emptying as a yardstick to establish time of death had waned considerably.

Textbooks were now warning against using experimental evidence and extrapolating it to forensic evidence.

He said that while one could see “general trends” it was “hazardous” to extrapolate to a specific case.

Botha is one of up to 17 witnesses who could testify in Pistorius’s defence and asked that he take the stand before Pistorius because of family reasons.

The paralympic athlete shot Steenkamp through a locked toilet door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year. He claims he mistook her for an intruder and has pleaded not guilty to murder.

He has also pleaded not guilty to charges relating to the negligent use of a firearm after a shot was allegedly fired out of the sunroof of a car and a shot was fired at a restaurant in Melrose Arch.

– Sapa