Roux's closing arguments in Pistorius case

Advocate Barry Roux representing Oscar Pistorius leaves North Gauteng High Court on March 6, 2014 in Pretoria, South Africa. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)
Advocate Barry Roux representing Oscar Pistorius leaves North Gauteng High Court on March 6, 2014 in Pretoria, South Africa. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images)

Barry Roux did his best to drill holes into prosecutor Gerrie Nel's "baker’s dozen of incongruencies", which he presented during the state's closing arguments on Thursday.

Oscar Pistorius will learn his fate next month after Judge Thokozile Masipa confirmed she would start delivering her verdict on September 11.

On Friday Pistorius's lawyer Barry Roux did his best to drill holes into prosecutor Gerrie Nel's "baker’s dozen of incongruencies", which he presented during the state's closing arguments on Thursday.

Roux, arguing that each of Nel's incongruencies could easily be explained, told the court: "If that's a baker's dozen, then I don't want to eat those cookies."

Roux also told the court that the "days of the reasonable man of the 1960s, in the grey suit wearing grey shoes, are over. We have moved on."

Roux argued that Pistorius's anxiety and feelings of vulnerability arising out of his disability needed to be considered when reaching a verdict in the Paralympian’s murder trial.

Roux argued that the state failed to provide conclusive evidence of an argument between Pistorius and his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in the early hours of Valentine's Day last year and that there was no motive or evidence of intent that would justify a conviction of murder. On the point of dolus eventualis or legal intent, Roux pointed that Steenkamp was in the bedroom and that an intruder was behind the cubicle door. Therefore, Roux said, Pistorius could not have foreseen that his actions would lead to her death.

The defence rested its case arguing that Pistorius had fired due to a reflexive reaction to noises in the toilet and that Steenkamp's death had been an accident - "a huge, unfortunate mistake."

"It all comes down to those 30 seconds when the accused was standing in front of the toilet door with his firearm," Roux told Masipa and her assessors.

In his reply, Nel reminded the court that the identity of who was behind the toilet door was irrelevant - "a human being was behind that door".

Nel added that Pistorius had intended to kill that person - an action, he said, that had consequences.

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