Pistorius jail term doubled af ter leniency appeal victory
THE FAMILY of the woman murdered by Oscar Pistorius yesterday declared justice had now been served after his jail sentence was more than doubled.
Reeva Steenkamp’s parents said the term of 13 years and five months would finally let them get on with their lives. Gold medal-winning Olympic sprinter Pistorius, 31, known as the Blade Runner due to his carbon-fibre prosthetics, was found guilty of murder last year and given six years – described by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal as ‘shockingly lenient’.
After the hearing, Ms Steenkamp’s father, Barry, 74, said: ‘I always, from the beginning, said justice had not been served. Now it has.’ Her mother June added: ‘We felt we didn’t have justice for Reeva by that too-lenient sentence. But now we have justice for her.’ But Pistorius’s older brother Carl tweeted: ‘Shattered... We have all suffered incomprehensible loss. The death of Reeva was and still is a great loss to our family too.’
The longer sentence – the minimum 15-year term for murder minus time already served – was the latest twist in the courtroom drama after the double amputee killed unarmed Ms Steenkamp, 29, at his Pretorian home on St Valentine’s Day, 2013.
Pistorius was not in court at Bloemfontein yesterday. Reeva died when he fired four shots through a locked toilet door, claiming he thought she was a burglar. A five-year sentence for manslaughter was handed down in 2014 by trial judge Thokozile Masipa.
But prosecutors successfully challenged the decision and secured a conviction for murder at the supreme court in December 2015, with Judge Masipa extending the sentence to six years last summer.
The appeals court yesterday said Judge Masipa had ‘erred in deviating’ from sentencing guidelines to a point where it has the effect of trivialising this serious offence’, said Judge Willie Seriti. Chief prosecutor Andrea Johnson had argued there had been no mitigating circumstances to justify the lighter jail term.
Barry Roux, defending, argued the appeal should be dismissed because his client did not kill the model deliberately. The Paralympic gold medallist was the first amputee sprinter at the Olympics, in London 2012, despite concerns his artificial limbs gave him an unfair advantage.
‘Justice has been served’