– Pistorius arrested and charged with murder after firing four shots at his model and law graduate girlfriend Steenkamp through a locked bathroom door at his luxury Pretoria apartment.
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Pistorius has already served about a year in prison and is now under house arrest for the previous conviction.
Olympic sportsman Oscar Pistorius continues to be found guilty of homicide after an earlier manslaughter verdict overturned. South Africa’s North Gauteng High Court, which tried Pistorius past year, will handle sentencing. In 2014, Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide-essentially manslaughter.
Judge Thokozile Masipa, issuing the ruling in court in Pretoria, also gave Pistorius a three-year suspended sentence for a firearms charge. The minimum sentence for murder is 15 years, but the judge does have the discretion to lower it.
Pistorius is now expected to return to court to be re-sentenced.
The judge said the original court judgment was “fundamentally flawed”, and that it was “common sense” that Pistorius would know his shots would be potentially fatal.
But Ms Steenkamp’s mother, June, was present and afterwards she was seen outside the court being embraced by members of the African National Congress Women’s League, who were singing songs of celebration.
The appeal that landed Pistorius back in prison is as seemingly complicated as the case itself.
Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby, denies deliberately killing Steenkamp, saying he mistook her for an intruder at his home.
“We have to convince the court that we are dealing with errors of law”, chief state prosecutor Gerrie Nel said.
137-c-18-(Chris Torchia (TOHR’-shuh), AP correspondent)-“back to jail”-AP correspondent Chris Torchia reports the appeals court ruling leaves Pistorius with little chance of staying out of jail”. Consumed with emotion by his daughter’s death, voice cracking, he lamented, “I’m sure she’ll be able to rest as well now”. During an interview with local television station ANN7, Reeva’s father Barry Steenkamp said, “It’s a big relief”.
Before he began his lengthy remarks, South African Judge of Appeal Eric Leach described the case as “a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions”.
Leach says the judges concluded with “no doubt” that Pistorius foresaw that the person behind the door would die after he pumped four bullets into it.
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Dolus eventualis refers to whether a person foresees the possibility that his or her action will cause death but carries on regardless.
