Final ruling on Oscar sentence
State effort for longer jail time quashed
THE High Court in Johannesburg has dismissed with costs the application by the state to appeal against the six-year jail term imposed on murderer Oscar Pistorius in July.
Judge Thokozile Masipa said‚ after hearing submissions from the state and Pistorius’ lawyers‚ that she was not persuaded there were reasonable prospects of success on appeal.
Masipa had in 2014 sentenced Pistorius‚ on a culpable homicide conviction‚ to a five-year prison term for the killing of his girlfriend‚ Reeva Steenkamp‚ in 2013.
However‚ the conviction of culpable homicide was set aside by the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in December last year and replaced with the murder conviction.
The SCA sent the matter back to the high court for sentencing on the new conviction for murder.
This was the sentence the state wanted to appeal as it felt it was “shockingly inappropriate”.
Prosecutor Advocate Gerrie Nel argued yesterday that there were reasonable prospects the court of appeal might increase the sentence.
The six-year sentence was a departure from the legislated minimum sentence of 15 years for murder.
“We emphasise that the present application ought not to be construed as an insult to this honourable court‚” Nel said.
Nel said it was not necessary for the state to convince Masipa that she materially misdirected herself.
“The applicant (state) has to show that the appeal court might reasonably find that the court misdirected itself.”
Nel said the court misdirected itself by finding that aggravating factors were outweighed by mitigating factors.
“It was in the bedroom where the accused had formed an intention to shoot. That particular fact is an aggravating factor.”
Nel said the SCA and Masipa rejected the argument that Pistorius acted in selfdefence when he shot Steenkamp.
“The respondent fired four shots through the door and he never offered an explanation on why he did so‚” Nel said.
Earlier, Pistorius’s defence, Advocate Barry Roux, argued that Pistorius was being sent like a ping pong ball between courts and called for the application to be dismissed with costs.
The murder case of Pistorius had been exhausted beyond the point of conceivable exhaustion, he added.
Roux accused the state of unnecessarily prolonging the legal process and subjecting Pistorius to continued uncertainty.
He argued Pistorius had been sentenced to an effective eight-year jail term if one considered the year Pistorius spent in prison and time spent under correctional supervision from October until this July. — TMG Digital