Masipa's rejection of premeditation was largely expected: there were only two witnesses to the shooting, one of whom was killed, leaving the state to rely on circumstantial evidence and the testimony of neighbours that Masipa rejected as conflicting and unreliable.
However,
she also absolved Pistorius of a lesser charge of non-premeditated murder on grounds that the state had failed to prove intent or dolus eventualis, a legal concept that centres on a person being held responsible for the foreseeable consequences of his actions.
"The evidence failed to prove the accused had intention" to kill, she said. "The accused had the intention to shoot at the person behind the door, not to kill."
Many ordinary people were perplexed.
And some legal experts thought she might have got it sufficiently wrong to give the prosecution a good chance if it decided to appeal on the point of law.
"Many of us believe she might have erred with regard to the ruling on non-premeditated murder, the whole issue of dolus eventualis," Cape Town criminal lawyer William Booth told South Africa's ENCA television.
For one thing, there are South African legal precedents. "We have many judgments which essentially say: 'If you point a firearm at someone and shoot, then you intend to kill them,'" said Steve Tuson, a law professor at Witwatersrand University.
And for another, elsewhere in her ruling Masipa conceded that "a reasonable person would have foreseen, if he fired shots at the door, the person inside the toilet might be struck and might die as a result".
Some experts suggested Masipa might have ruled out intent on the basis that Pistorius could not have believed specifically that he was shooting Steenkamp, with whose murder he was charged, rather than someone else. "How could the accused reasonably have foreseen that the shots he fired would kill the deceased?" she asked.
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