South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeals on Thursday found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013, a move that overturns a former, less severe conviction of manslaughter.
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Mr. Pistorius had been a national hero in South Africa during his athletic career, but many South Africans were outraged by the lower court’s decision to reject the murder charge and convict him only of culpable homicide.
In 2014, a High Court judge declared Pistorius guilty of manslaughter and sentenced him to five years in jail.
While today’s judgment has far-reaching implications for South African courts, Judge Leach also honed in on the human tragedy of the Pistorius case. He now faces a far more lengthy spell behind bars, however, with the minimum term for murder in South Africa standing at 15 years. Prosecutors said Pistorius shot Steenkamp during an argument, while the defense said Pistorius killed Steenkamp by mistake, thinking she was an intruder.
In a packed courtroom with Reeva Steenkamp’s family listening to every word, the judge said that when Oscar Pistorius made a decision to fire four shots through a closed toilet door, he had gambled with a person’s life – whoever that was.
Sentencing is now up to the court where Pistorius was tried. According to Leach, it didn’t matter if Pistorius knew that it was Steenkamp behind that door, it matters that he knew someone was behind that door, and firing into would likely result in the death of that person. Some rights groups say the white track star – dubbed “Blade Runner” because of the carbon fibre prosthetic blades he uses to race – got preferential treatment. “Romance blossoms and then ironically, on Valentine’s Day, all is destroyed when he takes her life”, he said.
And it appears neither is the South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal in their overturning of the prior verdict.
SYDNEY SESHIBEDI/REUTERS Pistorius occupied this cell in the Kgosi Mampuru II Correctional Centre before being released on parole.
The BBC adds that Pistorius “can challenge the ruling in the constitutional court but only if his lawyers can argue that his constitutional rights have been violated”.
Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby but who went on to become a global sporting hero, was not at the court session in Bloemfontein, about 400 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg.
In a brief interview on a local television, Barry Steenkamp applauded the judgement as being fair. A sentence will be imposed by the North Gauteng High Court.
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“It saddens me that 20 years after my sister Nicole’s murder, we are still seeing the same crimes, just different names, over and over again”, she said.
