Paralimpic champ Pistorius guilty of murder as court overturns conviction

PanARMENIAN.Net - South Africa’s supreme court of appeal has found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, overturning a previous conviction for culpable homicide, the Guardian reports.

The court has ordered the original trial judge in Pretoria to impose a harsher sentence. No date has been set for this hearing. The minimum sentence for murder is 15 years in prison.

Pistorius is currently living under house arrest at his uncle’s home in Pretoria, having been freed from prison after serving less than a year behind bars. He will reportedly be allowed to remain in correctional supervision until a new sentence is handed down.

Pistorius shot and killed Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day in 2013, and later said he thought she was an intruder.

Justice Eric Leach, who read out an abridged version of the judgment on Thursday morning on behalf of the court, said: “The accused ought to have been found guilty of murder.” He described Steenkamp’s death as “a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions”.

As is custom, Pistorius and his family were not in the court in Bloemfontein as the judgment was delivered. June Steenkamp, Reeva’s mother, was seen sobbing on the stairs of the court in Bloemfontein after the judgment was read out. Her father, Barry, speaking from Port Elizabeth, said his family could finally get on with their lives.

Pistorius was released into house arrest in October having served one-fifth of his original five-year term, and has been performing court-mandated community service.

The appeal centred on the legal concept of dolus eventualis, or indirect intention – in layman’s terms, the question of whether Pistorius had foreseen the possibility that he might kill somebody when he fired four shots into the bathroom door.

The appeal court ruled that the trial judge, Thokozile Masipa, had applied this concept incorrectly, saying her ruling was “confusing in various respects”.