South African Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius attends his sentencing at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria October 21, 2014.
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The double amputee was convicted of culpable homicide, the equivalent of manslaughter, after he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a locked toilet door in 2013. Pistorius was instead found guilty of culpable homicide, a charge comparable to manslaughter, and sentenced to five years in prison.
Prosecutors called on Tuesday for South Africa’s “Blade Runner” Oscar Pistorius to be convicted of murder and sent back to jail for shooting his girlfriend, challenging a court’s decision to sentence him for a lesser offence.
In South African law, the dolus eventualis charge applies if the accused knew that they could kill someone, but still continued with their course of action.
He claimed the trial court made a mistake by not taking into consideration what had happened earlier in Pistorius’s bedroom before he went out to shoot at the alleged intruder.
The five judges questioned prosecutor Gerrie Nel and Roux for about three hours in the court in Bloemfontein, a city in central South Africa that is the country’s judicial capital, with Steenkamp’s mother June Steenkamp and many journalists in attendance.
Prosecutors said Pistorius meant to kill Steenkamp, who they said fled to a toilet during a row.
The appeal court has reserved its judgment, and has not given a date for this to be revealed. If the original verdict is overturned, he would face a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison. As well as this, state prosecutor, Gerrie Nel claims that the trial judge also ignored circumstantial evidence.
One of the judges pressed Mr Roux on whether Mr Pistorius could not have foreseen that he would kill someone by shooting multiple times through the door of the very small cubicle. “It would be a miracle if you didn’t shoot someone”.
He also made out a case for the validity of the appeal in light of the court making a conviction on a “competent verdict”. He contended that the trial judge did not ignore circumstantial evidence and that they dealt with every aspect in their rulings.
Arguments were scheduled to last just one day.
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They said they would not be issuing their decision on Tuesday and there is no time frame for when they will, although the court has said it would aim to release a decision by the end of this month.
