[Skybird]

5 years for a taken life, and after earlier repeated display of inappropriate gun use. The judge must have lost her marbles.

And then: suspended penalties, 3 years prison for the earlier inappropriate use of a gun, turned into a 5 years suspended penalty. Of the other 5 years for the killing, he probably will serve a more or less significant amount of time outside the prison.

As a former psychologist I can only laugh about the concept of suspended penalties. Imagined implementation of stimuli is not the stimuli implemented in reality, regarding learning processes and neurla encoding, it is not just miles apart - it is two totally different things. Learning theorists and behaviorists know what I mean. Jurists simply do not know what they are talking about when defending suspended penalties, they just do an exercise in unworldly, abstract bean-counting that mistakes what reality is with one's own theory about what it is.

A suspended penalty is no penalty at all. Not even partially. Not by one bit. Only jurists rating bureaucratic formalities as more meaningful than reality and the way human mind, psyche and cognitions work, can argue with that. From a psychologist's POV, it is drivel.If you want to send a warning message to the subject, reduce the penalty accordingly, make it short. But NEVER suspend it. Regarding learning, it sends completely the opposite of the intended message. Heck, that is even hardwired in our brain's neural network- offenders do not learn from suspended penalties to take them as a warning: they must instead actively learn NOT to understand a suspended penalty as "no penalty". Which completely turns it ad absurdum.

I do not know what would anger me more here: the light amount of penalty, or the way the judge explained her reasons. Pistorius did not suffer a tragic accident, imo. And he was taken note of for his inappropriate gun usage before. I also have an issue with the court dismissing several indications that imo must be considered, but were not considered by the court.

If one does not see it as murder, i would have given him 8-10 years - and no early suspension or prison time cut short. A human life is a human life. The woman will not be given early release from her death. Her killing is not suspended at all.

However, it can be argued that it was murder. Murder by passion, maybe not planned by a long time in advance, but still: murder by passion, by hot-cooking temper - or ice-cold intention to give the impression of that hot emotional arousal, to get away with it. Pistorius seems to be a great stage talent, he showed it repeatedly.

To me, I think it was kind of a mix of both.