Judge Postpones Oscar Pistorius Defense Hearings

PRETORIA, South Africa — The trial of Oscar Pistorius, the double-amputee track star, was adjourned until April 7 on Friday after one of the two judicial assessors was taken ill, the judge said. The announcement came shortly after Mr. Pistorius arrived at the courthouse for the first day of his defense on murder charges and after more than three weeks of prosecution testimony depicting him as spoiled, irascible, jealous and trigger-happy. Mr. Pistorius, 27, has said that he killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, by mistake, shooting her with a handgun in the early hours of Feb. 14, 2013, but he has denied the charge of premeditated murder, which carries a minimum 25-year jail term. He has said that he shot her through a locked bathroom door believing her to be an intruder at his upscale home in a gated complex in Pretoria. As court officials, lawyers, journalists and Mr. Pistorius gathered in the courtroom on Friday, Judge Thokozile Masipa said the trial would be postponed until April 7 because one of the two assessors sitting with her was sick. There is no jury trial in South Africa and assessors routinely advise judges. Mr. Pistorius was born without fibula bones and had both legs amputated below the knee in his infancy. Wearing the scythe-like prostheses that inspired his nickname, the Blade Runner, he competed in both the Paralympic Games and against able-bodied athletes in the 2012 Olympic Games in London, cementing his reputation as an emblem of human triumph over adversity. While dating Ms. Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, he also became a well-known figure on South Africa’s celebrity circuit. But after four gunshots echoed around the complex where he lived, his life — and his public image — changed. The prosecution rested its case in the trial on Tuesday after introducing into evidence text messages between Mr. Pistorius and Ms. Steenkamp designed to bolster its case that the couple had a volatile relationship. At one point, for instance, Ms. Steenkamp told Mr. Pistorius in a text message that his behavior at an engagement party for a friend of hers — in which he accused her of flirting with another man and demanded that they leave early — had been perplexing and upsetting. She also accused him of micromanaging her behavior, criticizing her and holding her to a double standard in which he could talk about past romances but she could not. But in cross-examination, the defense established that of more than 1,000 text messages between the couple, only four had been negative, and that many had been extremely warm and affectionate.