The murder trial of Oscar Pistorius is set to resume in South Africa on Monday after a break to evaluate the athlete’s mental health.
His defence team earlier argued he was suffering from an anxiety disorder when he killed his girlfriend.
A report by experts will help the judge decide how significant this is.
The athlete denies deliberately killing Reeva Steenkamp. He says he shot her accidentally in a state of panic after mistaking her for an intruder.
BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding says the experts’ report seems unlikely to alter the course of this trial dramatically – the defence has already acknowledged that Mr Pistorius’s anxiety would not have stopped him knowing right from wrong.
The defence is expected to finish presenting its evidence in the next few days – calling perhaps three more witnesses.
Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law graduate, was shot through a toilet door at Oscar Pistorius’s house in Pretoria on Valentine’s Day last year.
The couple had been dating for three months.
The trial was adjourned on May 20 after Judge Thokozile Masipa ordered Pistorius, 27, to undergo a month of tests as an outpatient at Weskoppies psychiatric hospital in Pretoria.
The prosecution requested the evaluation after a defence witness said the double amputee was suffering from Generalised Anxiety Disorder.
Four appointed psychiatrists would “inquire into whether the accused by reason of mental illness or mental defect was at the time of the commission of the offence criminally responsible for the offence as charged,” Judge Masipa said.
The team would decide whether he was “capable of appreciating the wrongfulness of his act.”
It was revealed on Friday that one of the experts involved had suffered a heart attack, though this was not expected to delay the trial.
There are no juries at trials in South Africa, so the athlete’s fate will ultimately be decided by the judge, assisted by two assessors.
If found guilty of murder, Pistorius, who went on trial on March 3 this year, could face life imprisonment. If he is acquitted of that charge, the court will consider an alternative charge of culpable homicide, for which he could receive about 15 years in prison.
Kaykayjabari's Blog 