Eyewitness News: Magistrate to rule on Pistorius' bail

Mandy Wiener | 21 February 2013
PRETORIA - The prosecution team's only witness to testify against murder accused Oscar Pistorius appears to have folded under cross-examination.

The athlete, charged with premeditated murder, is applying for bail in the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court.

Pistorius was arrested at his Pretoria East home on 14 February for shooting and killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.

Witness and investigating officer Hilton Botha on Wednesday conceded he mistook the name of a herbal remedy for testosterone, after earlier testifying that the substance had been found with syringes.

Defence advocate Barry Roux accused Botha of introducing untested claims as fact.

Botha also admitted his claims regarding the trajectory of the bullets and the shooter's location were without substance because he did not yet have a forensics report.

Later on, it emerged the warrant officer also contaminated the crime scene by not wearing protective shoe covers while in the house.

He said the covers were finished and that he needed something from the house.

Roux placed it on record that the police's forensics team missed a bullet projectile left in the toilet bowl, which the defence team found.

FINAL ARGUMENTS TO BE HEARD

Magistrate Desmond Nair is expected to rule on bail on Thursday.

Nair will have to decide between two starkly contrasting versions of what happened at the so-called Blade Runner's home during the early hours of Valentine’s Day.

Emotions swayed and shifted as Botha first made damning revelations and then crumbled under cross-examination.

As the court vacillated between versions, so too did public sentiment.

The question now will be which set of circumstances and events will magistrate Nair accept, and will he grant Pistorius bail?

Details of the both the state and defence versions have now been released, as the country and the world analyse, debate and carefully pick away at what may or may not have happened on the day in question.

A fuller picture of events will only emerge when the matter goes to trial.

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