South African sprint runner, Oscar Leonard Carl Pistorius
will
be back in court in South Africa today to learn his fate over the killing of
his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
The “Blade Runner”, 27, was cleared of murdering 29-year-old
Reeva in a Valentine’s Day shooting at his home.
Pistorius could be imprisoned for up to 15 years, or he
could go free with a community order.
However, he was convicted of the lesser charge of culpable
homicide following a six month trial in Pretoria which ended last month.
Judge Thokozile Masipa said that prosecutors had failed to
prove an intent to kill when he fired four nine millimetre rounds through the
door of a toilet cubicle.
Pistorius, who often broke down sobbing during the
protracted proceedings, always maintained he thought he was shooting an
intruder who had broken into his home.
The Mirror, UK, reported that the hearing is likely to be a
lengthy affair because the judge will hear arguments from prosecution and
defence lawyers and possibly from psychological experts.
Public opinion is divided in South Africa with some people
demanding he goes to jail while others maintaining he should go free.
He can be punished by anything from 15 years behind bars to
a suspended sentence or even community service.
Steve Tucson, a law professor at Witwaters Rand university
in Johannesburg, said: “We have many judgments which essentially say ‘if you
point a firearm at someone and shoot then you intend to kill them.”
Pistorius could appeal against his culpable homicide
conviction - the equivalent of manslaughter under British law.
However, legal experts in South Africa said that under their
law an appeal cannot be launched until the sentencing process has been
concluded.
Pistorius, once a celebrated athlete who ran in the 2012
Olympics, was charged with premeditated murder in a televised trial that
transfixed many people around the world, but Masipa found him not guilty of
that charge.
She drew criticism from some South Africans who thought
Pistorius could at least have been convicted of a lesser murder charge on the
grounds that he knew a person could die when he fired four bullets through a
toilet door in his home early on Valentine’s Day last year.
Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, died in the hail of bullets,
and prosecutors said Pistorius had opened fire in anger after the couple
argued.
The runner testified that he mistook Steenkamp for an
intruder who was about to come out of the toilet and attack him.
South African lawyers vary widely in predictions about what
kind of sentence Pistorius will get. Some say he is unlikely to go to jail
because defence lawyers will successfully argue that the athlete is a
first-time offender with a disability that would subject him to particular
hardship in prison, while others anticipate that Pistorius will be sentenced to
some prison time because of the severity of his crime.
“I think that the probabilities are that the judge will send
him to prison for a certain period, but not a very long one,” said George
Bizos, a human rights lawyer.
There are “clear aggravating and mitigating factors” that
could influence the judge’s decision-making but that it was difficult to
accurately predict the penalty because the “sentencing law is so individually
applied”, said Kelly Phelps, a senior lecturer in the public law department at
the University of Cape Town
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