Oscar’s court troubles are about to begin again

court for the remainder of this court term.

The defence yesterday confirmed it has not yet filed opposing papers, but it will defend the application.

Pistorius’s lawyer, Brian Webber, said: “We have already filed our notice of intention to oppose and will in due course file our grounds in this regard.”

Webber could not say when they would file their court papers.

Webber was surprised that a date had been set when contacted by Independent Newspapers and said he had not yet been informed. Prosecutor Gerrie Nel is expected to ask Judge Masipa for leave to appeal to the Appeal Court in Bloemfontein.

Since the start of the lengthy trial in March, the prosecution has been confident that it could prove murder. First prize was a finding that Pistorius had the direct intention to kill Reeva Steenkamp when he fired four shots into the toilet door at his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day last year.

But Nel seemed prepared to accept second prize – a finding of murder on the doctrine of – that Pistorius should have foreseen his actions would kill a person behind the door. He is, however, not prepared to accept a finding of culpable homicide.

According to Nel, the judge erred in law when she made a finding of culpable homicide and incorrectly applied the principles of to the accepted facts in the case.

Nel said Judge Masipa “trawled through the plethora of defences” provided by Pistorius and she picked one for him.

According to Nel, all Pistorius’s defences were mutually destructive and irreconcilable with the facts of what happened that morning.