Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of murder after a South African appeals court overturned an earlier manslaughter verdict.
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It was in February 2013 that Pistorius killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp when he shot her four times through a locked toilet door.
High Court Judge Thokozile Masipa handed down a five-year jail sentence in October last year for the culpable homicide of Steenkamp, who Pistorius, 29, said he thought was an intruder in his bathroom.
On Nov. 3, prosecutors argued at the Supreme Court of Appeal, which is in Bloemfontein city, that the judge at Pistorius’ murder trial in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria made errors when she acquitted him of murder.
The judge called the circumstances surrounding Steenkamp’s death “a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions”.
Dolus eventualis refers to whether a person foresees the possibility that his or her action will cause death but carries on regardless.
“He ought to have been convicted not of culpable homicide on that count but of culpable murder”.
Members of the ruling African National Congress party’s Women’s League have attended the court sessions in solidarity with Steenkamp’s family and in support of women’s rights.
“All the shots fired through the door would nearly inevitably have struck the person behind it. There would be effectively no place to hide”, Leach said. “The question is whether the previous judge misapplied the law or not”, Johannesburg-based criminal law attorney Zola Majavu said.
Under South African law, he was eligible for release under “correctional supervision”, having served a sixth of his sentence. No date for Pistorius’s sentencing hearing has been set, and he is expected to remain under house arrest until then.
If the Supreme Court of Appeal convicts Pistorius of murder, he faces a 15-year prison sentence, the minimum punishment for murder in South Africa.
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South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority has said he can remain there until sentencing occurs on his new conviction, most likely next year.
