State rips into Oscar’s case

IT IS clear from Oscar Pistorius’s submissions to the Constitutional Court that his application is based on questions of fact, in the disguised form of constitutional issues.

This is according to the prosecution, which yesterday filed its opposing papers to his latest bid to approach the highest court in the land.

Senior state advocate David Broughton, in an affidavit, said the ConCourt mandate was to rule on constitutional matters, not criminal matters where a person merely disagreed with the sentence.

Pistorius last month turned to the ConCourt in a last bid to get out of the 13-year and five-month jail term he received from the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein.

A full court of the SCA last year said he should have been sentenced to the mandatory 15 years in the Pretoria High Court by Judge Thokozile Masipa, but it took into account that he had already served 12 months in jail and was out on seven months correctional supervision.

His counsel, Shawn van Heerden, earlier said in an affidavit that Pistorius was of the opinion that the SCA ruling ignored material factual findings of Judge Masipa – mitigating circumstances justifying a departure from the prescribed 15-year minimum term for murder.

Van Heerden said he was aware that the Constitutional Court did not usually grant leave to appeal against sentence unless the appeal raised fair trial issues. “However, as this application reveals, this is precisely what has occurred,” he said.

But Broughton said this was simply not a case where constitutional issues were at play. He disagreed that Pistorius did not get a fair hearing before the SCA and stated that his application was simply based on a disagreement with the SCA’s assessment of the facts of his case. No date has been set for the ConCourt hearing.