Okay, I watched about ten minutes this afternoon, the first bits of the trial I saw. A couple of things struck me. Pistorius was testifying. I suppose these are particularities of South African courtrooms.
Firstly, when Pistorius replied to the (male) prosecutor, he said, "My lady", addressing the judge directly. I wonder if this is common.
Second, he read out whole huge scripts of stuff about fans being moved and mobile phones being tampered with, which the prosecutor pulled him up on, saying that OP was reciting rehearsed answers, trying to get these things on record, while evading the questions.
Thirdly, both the prosecuting and defence lawyers more or less testified during this question period. What I mean is, rather than be brief and concise, they were both allowed to give long rambling speeches, the defence lawyer as an explanation of a point of the defence, and the prosecutor during his own questioning. There seemed to be no cries of "objection, leading the witness", etc.
The thing that most flabbergasted me was the digression (necessary, I'm sure) to explain how the scene was tampered with (the word "tamper" had to be defined for OP), and how the judge allowed all these rambling conversations. Surely, the only important question is, what was OP's motive in firing a gun through his bathroom door? It was obviously to kill someone, but who?
It's a totally different style of justice than I've seen in the west...
