Lawyers for Oscar Pistorius will return to court next month to challenge prosecutors’ arguments that he should be convicted of murder and sentenced to a minimum of 15 years in jail.
The disgraced Paralympian is currently serving a five-year jail sentence for shooting dead his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, but could be moved to house arrest in August.
Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled in December that state prosecutors could go to the supreme court of appeal over her verdict of culpable homicide – the South African equivalent of manslaughter – and seek to have it upgraded to murder.
An appeal can only be granted on a question of law, not on a judge’s factual findings. Masipa agreed with the prosecutors’ contention that the verdict was based on her interpretation of law, but the defence will seek to cast doubt on this at the South Gauteng high court in Johannesburg on 13 March.
“We will argue that these are matters of fact, rather than matters of law,” Pistorius’s lawyer Brian Webber said on Tuesday.
By lodging the application now, Pistorius’s defence team hope that Masipa will concede that another court could find the verdict was based on fact rather than law. This may prove a crucial legal weapon for them and deprive the state of momentum when the case is heard at the supreme court later this year.
Pistorius, a double amputee known as the Blade Runner, killed Steenkamp by shooting four times through a locked toilet door at his luxury home in Pretoria two years ago. He told the court that he mistook her for a burglar, while prosecutors argued that he shot her after an argument.
A panel of judges at the supreme court will consider whether Masipa erred in not applying the principle of dolus eventualis, a category of murder where the perpetrator subjectively foresees the possibility of his or her act causing death and persists regardless. If it decides Pistorius’s actions fall within this definition, it can upgrade his culpable homicide conviction to murder, which carries a minimum sentence of 15 years.
Steenkamp’s mother, June, said on Tuesday that she had moved on and was no longer following the case. “I’m not focusing my life any more on Oscar,” she told the Guardian. “If by law they condemn him to a longer sentence, that’s got nothing to do with me. What happens to Oscar now happens to Oscar. It isn’t going to affect me. Reeva is never going to walk through that door again.”
She added: “I’m not a vengeful person and I don’t wish ill on anyone. The appeal is up to the law. The law must take its course and God must take His course.”
It was reported earlier this month that Pistorius has been given new privileges in the maximum-security Kgosi Mampuru II prison, including the right to wear jewellery, own a radio and have physical contact with visitors.
