PRETORIA, South Africa — What began on Wednesday as a day for the prosecution to solidify what it had described as an irrefutable case of premeditated murder against Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic champion, turned into a near-rout by the defense, which attacked the testimony of the state’s main witness, the chief police investigator.
It was the second full day of a hearing to decide whether Mr. Pistorius, the double amputee nicknamed Blade Runner who made Olympic history by running with able-bodied athletes in the 2012 Games in London, should be given bail as he awaits trial for shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in the early morning hours last Thursday. Mr. Pistorius claimed in an affidavit read in court on Tuesday that he had mistaken Ms. Steenkamp for a burglar and had shot her out of fear.
But what was supposed to be merely a bail hearing took on the proportions of a full-blown trial, with sharp questions from the presiding magistrate, Desmond Nair, and a withering cross-examination that left the prosecution’s main witness, Detective Hilton Botha, grasping for answers that did not contradict his earlier testimony.
At first, Detective Botha’s testimony seemed to go well. He explained how preliminary ballistic evidence supported the prosecution’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius had been wearing prosthetic legs when he shot at the bathroom door, behind which hid Ms. Steenkamp. Mr. Pistorius claimed in his affidavit that he had hobbled over from his bedroom on his stumps, and felt extremely vulnerable to an intruder as a result.
As Detective Botha described how bullets had pierced Ms. Steenkamp’s skull and shattered her arm and hip bones, Mr. Pistorius sobbed with his head in his hands.
“A defenseless woman, unarmed, was gunned down,” Detective Botha said.
Using a schematic diagram of the bedroom, the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, asked Detective Botha to walk Magistrate Nair through the crime scene. The detective explained that Ms. Steenkamp’s slippers and overnight bag were on the left side of the bed, next to the sliding balcony door that Mr. Pistorius claimed he got up in the middle of the night to close. He also said the holster of Mr. Pistorius’s 9-millimeter pistol was found under the left side of the bed, next to where Ms. Steenkamp would have been sleeping. That called into question Mr. Pistorius’s statement that he thought Ms. Steenkamp was still in bed when he heard the sound of a burglar, the detective said.
“If the girl was on the bed, that is where the holster was found,” Detective Botha said.
Detective Botha said investigators had found two boxes of testosterone along with syringes and needles in Mr. Pistorius’s bedroom. Testosterone is a banned substance for most professional athletes, and is known to increase aggression in people who take supplements of it.
Asked by Mr. Nel what he would have done had he suspected that an intruder was in his bedroom, Detective Botha replied, “I would get my girlfriend and try to get her out of the room.”
He said he had interviewed witnesses who said that they heard shouting in the house, and that the lights were on, contradicting Mr. Pistorius’s statement that it had been too dark to see anything in the bedroom.
A neighbor, he said, heard “two people talking loud at one another, it sounded like a fight,” between 2 and 3 a.m.
Other witnesses spoke about hearing two or three shots, then a woman’s scream, followed by more shots, Detective Botha said.
He also described previous violent incidents involving Mr. Pistorius. He had threatened to assault a man in an altercation about a woman at a racetrack, Detective Botha said. He told another man that he would “break his legs,” Detective Botha testified.
Detective Botha also testified that Mr. Pistorius had foreign bank accounts and a house in Italy, which made him a flight risk.
“I believe he knew that she was in the bathroom,” said Detective Botha. “And that he shot four shots through the door.”
Barry Roux, a lawyer for Mr. Pistorius, cross-examined Detective Botha, seeking to poke holes in his account.
The substance found, Mr. Roux said, was not testosterone at all but a herbal supplement called testocomposutim coenzyme, which is used by many athletes and not banned by anti-doping agencies. Asked if the substance had been tested, Detective Botha said tests had not yet been completed.
“I didn’t read the whole name” on the container, Detective Botha admitted.
He acknowledged that the witness who claimed to have heard the two arguing, he said, had lived almost 2,000 feet away, possibly out of earshot. Under questioning by the prosecutor, he later revised the estimate to 1,000 feet.
Detective Botha also acknowledged that there were no signs that Ms. Steenkamp had defended herself against an assailant, and that the police had no evidence that the couple’s relationship was anything but loving.
Mr. Roux accused the prosecution of selectively taking “every piece of evidence and try to extract the most possibly negative connotation and present it to the court.”
Detective Botha was forced to admit that the police forensic team had missed a shell casing that the defense lawyers later found in the toilet bowl, and that he had entered the crime scene without covering his shoes because the police had run out of shoe covers.
Eventually, Detective Botha conceded that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s version of events based on the existing evidence.
Magistrate Nair seemed skeptical that Mr. Pistorius was a flight risk.
“Do you subjectively believe that he would take the option, being who he is, using prostheses to get around, familiar as he is, to flee South Africa if he were granted bail?” Magistrate Nair asked Detective Botha.
“Yes,” he replied.
The court was adjourned, and final arguments in the bail hearing are to be heard Thursday morning.
Pistorius Defense Undermines Police Testimony at Bail Hearing
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Pistorius Defense Undermines Police Testimony at Bail Hearing
