i don t recall, my lady. no. no, i apologize, my lady, for laughing. i hope it doesn t happen again. no, it won t. i also want to say something to people out there, you possibly think this is entertainment, it is not. so, please, restrain yourselves. nbc s mike taibbi was inside the courtroom in pretoria. this prosecutor, the lead prosecutor is known as the pit bull. the judge in this case, not appreciating some of the behavior in what appears to be a strategy to try and break oscar pistorius. reporter: yeah. you know, the nickname for him is the pit bull or the rottweiler, but i have to tell you he was a smaller bull terrier taking smaller chunks, but no less relentless. he started off by attacking the description of a loving relationship that oscar had given that he d had with reeva
expected to be an attempt by jerry nell to show that pistorius is unable to reconcile some things that he said before, with some things that he said in his own statement on the stand over the past three days. cross-examination has now begun. ronan? it certainly has begun. that was nbc s mike taibbi. the prosecutor you just heard about in the pistorius trial is a man named jerry nell. his nickname, pit bull. he once spent eight days straight grilling a witness on the stand. what is nell s strategy with pistorius? joining me for an answer to that, attorney tom mesereau representing a range of high-profile clients, including michael jackson. first up, how do you think this gambit of playing that watermelon footage for the court? obviously a devastating moment in that courtroom. well, the prosecutor s trying
for that. i did, my lady. the prosecution also showed grask graphic photos to the court. they told pistorius to look and he refused. i ve taken responsibility. but i will not look at a picture where i m torment eed by what i saw and felt that night. emotional day. the prosecutor also had a disturbing and unexpected device for capturing the extent of the damage to reeva steenkamp s body. video of oscar pistorius shooting a watermelon. you can see him firing, and then see the incredible explosive damage to that watermelon. a vivid image for the court. nbc news correspondent mike taibbi has the latest. reporter: ronan, oscar pistorius showed up this morning to complete the unchallenged version of his story about why he shot and killed girlfriend
instead of an intruder, and he said that he went out to the balcony to scream to my god and to the reeva and like he had never before, and what the witnesses heard was pistorius screaming and not a woman screaming and this is the groundwork that barry roux is setting up getting this testimony from pistorius. and as you said, mike, he took off the prosthetic legsons the difference of the height difference in the door and the height difference when he is not wearing the prosthetic legs. my guess is that because roux did not take it any further, is going to talk about the sequence of the wounds of reeva could have been in the sequence that his own pathologist said it and not the way that the prosecution said it. and another way that the police investigation and the prosecutor
breathing. we ll take an adjournment. court will adjourn. that was the court taking an adjournment. in south africa is mike taibbi. tell us, what was it like being inside that courtroom as pistorius broke down? reporter: the whole courtroom was riveted and hanging on every word and gesture by oscar pistorius. there were times when you could sense that people weren t even breathing loudly, they were just so affected, almost physically affected by the emotional power of what he was saying. it could be argued and has been argued by some watching, it would be just as emotion pally overwraugt if he blew his temper and after a fight and fired those shots or accidentally shot her as he claims and laid out today in detail because he thought she was an intruder. he went on and gave the first