A Verdict That's Just Pistorious

There are 52 million people in South Africa and 51,999,999 know that Olympian Oscar Pistorious murdered his girlfriend. The only person who doesn't know is the judge in the case.

In case you forgot, Pistorious is the double-amputee known as "Blade Runner" whose inspirational story and good looks had the world's heart aflutter in the 2012 Olympics when he competed in the 400-meter track event. Then he went home and shot his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp to death on Valentine's Day through the door of his bathroom.

The judge ruled yesterday that prosecutors had not proved intentional murder. She was unconvinced by some of the testimony suggesting Pistorious was a hothead, a gun fanatic and a serial domestic abuser. Unfortunately for her honor, the facts are persistent without those testimonies and they are these: he shot and killed her, by his own admission, with bullets designed to explode upon impact. An expert testified that the four shots, one of which missed, shattered her skull and blew up inside her body.

Pistorious claims that he thought he heard an intruder run into the bathroom. He grabbed his gun and began firing.

This is eminently plausible if you are willing to suspend disbelief that he would rise out of bed and fail to check to see if his beloved was asleep next to him.

It is eminently plausible if you are willing to suspend disbelief that he thought an intruder would run into the bathroom, and then after doing so, continue to pose a threat to the couple's security.

It is eminently plausible if you are willing to suspend disbelief that the next logical action was to fire a pistol indiscriminately rather than call police.

It is eminently plausible if you are willing to suspend disbelief that Pistorious would fire what would almost certainly be fatal shots without ever making sure that his girlfriend was safe.

And after all that, you must further ignore or disbelieve all the evidence presented by ear-witnesses about shouting before the shots were fired.

In other words, his alibi is preposterous. It's ridiculous. It is Pistorious.

This is the dumbest judicial decision I can think of since Dred Scott in 1857. Oscar Pistorious is so guilty that even the best lawyers couldn't help him concoct a marginally credible pretext for the killing. And the jurist, who rules without the aid of a jury in South Africa, is so thick she fell for it.

The judge has yet to rule on a lesser charge of manslaughter; indeed, she all but announced a conviction on that count. That certainly ameliorates the injustice and recoups a shred of her tattered credibility. But it doesn't change the facts. And they all say Oscar Pistorious is a cold-blooded murderer.