Pistorius: It was murder
Paralympian faces 15 years in jail after manslaughter conviction for killing girlfriend is overturned
OSCAR Pistorius faces arrest and an immediate return to prison after being found guilty of murdering his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The Paralympic athlete, 29, could be jailed for 15 years following a unanimous decision by five senior judges yesterday to replace his manslaughter conviction for her shooting with one of murder.
He remained under house arrest at his family mansion last night but legal sources said he will be forced to fight for bail or spend Christmas behind bars.
Miss Steenkamp’s mother June sat in the front row of a packed public gallery for the ruling in South Africa’s Appeal Court in Bloemfontein.
She sighed and closed her eyes as Justice Eric Leach read the findings. She was then was comforted by friends.
Miss Steenkamp’s father Barry, a racehorse trainer, said: ‘I am sure that Reeva is up there watching it and now she’s saying, “Justice was done”. I am sure she will be able to rest well now.’
Pistorius was said to be ‘devastated’ at the ruling, which comes a month after he was released from jail into house arrest at his uncle’s mansion.
He did not attend the court, but watched the ruling on TV.
The sprinter has spent a month in great comfort and relative freedom after being released from his cell having served one year of his fiveyear sentence.
He will be sentenced on the more serious crime next month, but is likely to be jailed until then after his original sentence and house arrest status were set aside by the Appeal Court judges. A source said: ‘I don’t think the prosecutor has any alternative but to take him into custody pending the sentencing hearing, which cannot take place until the New Year.
‘He will be free to apply for bail, but he could very well now be behind bars for Christmas.’
The sprinter faces a much harsher sentence for shooting Miss Steenkamp, also 29, through a locked toilet door at his home on Valentine’s Day 2013. He had claimed he thought it was an intruder.
The appeal panel’s findings contained a scathing analysis of trial judge Thokozile Masipa’s original verdict of manslaughter after she acquitted Pistorius of murder.
The lower court had not only made errors in the application of the law, the appeal judges found, but ignored swathes of relevant evidence. The judgment said the original judge’s understanding of ‘dolus eventualis’ – awareness of the likely outcome of an action – to be ‘confusing in various respects’.
Justice Leach ruled that the athlete must have foreseen that he might kill the person behind his toilet door, given the number and type of bullets he used.
The panel dismissed Pistorius’ ‘vacillating’ performance in the witness box and said his description of events ‘varied substantially’.
As a gun enthusiast he would have known the likely outcome of firing four closely grouped bullets into a tiny space, even if his intention was not to kill.
‘Almost all the shots fired through the door would inevitably have struck the deceased. There was nowhere to hide,’ the panel said.
The minimum sentence for murder in South Africa is 15 years. Pistorius’s family said they were scrutinising the judgment in order to consider their next step.
‘Nowhere to hide’