Oscar panel find no mental defects
Paralympian Oscar Pistorius does not suffer mental defects that could influence his behaviour, prosecutor Gerrie Nel told the High Court in Pretoria on Monday.
FILE PICTURE: Prosecutor Gerrie Nel questions a forensic expert at the high court in Pretoria during the murder trial of paralympian Oscar Pistorius on Wednesday, 16 April 2014. Pistorius says that he accidentally killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp by firing through a closed toilet door, mistaking her for an intruder in his house before dawn on 14 February 2013. The prosecution says the double-amputee runner is lying, and that he killed his girlfriend after an argument during which she fled into the toilet cubicle of his house to seek refuge. Picture: Werner Beukes/SAPA/Pool
He was summarising the findings of a panel of three psychiatrists and a clinical psychologist who observed the murder-accused athlete for 30 days at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital following a court order. Pistorius was a day patient.
“The panel has provided reports and they will be handed over to court. A mental disorder did not affect his ability to distinguish between right or wrong,” said Nel.
On May 20, the court ruled that Pistorius’s evaluation would inquire if he was “at the time of the commission of the offence criminally responsible” and if he could appreciate the “wrongfulness of his actions and act according to that appreciation”.
Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled that Pistorius would be evaluated to determine whether his general anxiety disorder and his disability had an effect on him when he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day last year.
Pistorius is charged with Steenkamp’s murder. He shot her dead through the locked door of his toilet in his Pretoria home, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him.
– Sapa
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