Paralympian Oscar Pistorius’s lawyer Barry Roux has
lashed out at police inefficiency saying they were to blame for many criminals
not being convicted.
“There’s tardiness. They don’t take the docket to
court – sometimes they don’t take it because they sold it. Or sometimes they
don’t take it because they have misfiled it,” Roux told law students at the
University of the Witwatersrand yesterday, The Citizen reported.
He said the biggest problem in South Africa was
that people who committed crimes did so knowing “there’s a fair chance they
won’t get caught – or if arrested, won’t get tried”.
Roux called on police to “wake up”.
He also criticised certain procedures in court that
led to delayed justice.
“If justice is delayed long enough people don’t
show up any more or simply forget what happened,” he said.
Pistorius was charged with murder following the
fatal shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. He shot her through a locked
toilet door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year. He claimed he
mistook her for an intruder.
Judge Thokozile Masipa will hand down judgment in
the trial on September 11.
