Soon to be free Pistorius faces 15 years imprisonment

Paralympic gold medallist Oscar Pistorius is due to be released from prison this week – but his freedom could be short-lived if he is convicted of murder later in the year.
Pistorius has spent ten months of a five-year sentence in jail for culpable homicide after he shot his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a toilet door on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
He was cleared of murder in September last year by Judge Thokozile Masipa, but South African state prosecutors have this week filed an appeal against the verdict.
Under South African law, a judge’s factual findings in a case cannot be appealed, says eNCA. Instead, prosecutors are arguing that Masipa was mistaken in her application of the law and that a different court could reach a different decision – namely that Pistorius should have been convicted of murder, not culpable homicide.
In giving her verdict last year, Masipa said that the state had failed to prove the case was “murder dolus eventualis”, a legal term for when the perpetrator foresees the possibility of his action causing death and persists regardless. This is one point of law the prosecution claims Masipa might have erred on.
Masipa accepted that Pistorius genuinely thought it was an intruder, not Steenkamp, behind the toilet door, and said: “Clearly he did not subjectively foresee this as a possibility that he would kill the person behind the door – let alone the deceased – as he thought she was in the bedroom.”
Legal commentators suggested that Pistorius, with his knowledge of guns and bullets, must have foreseen that he would have killed the person behind the door, be it Steenkamp or an intruder.
However, Masipa insisted that South African law warns against automatically assuming that because a perpetrator “should have” foreseen the consequences of his actions that he actually did. She said the prosecution had failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Pistorius foresaw the fatal consequences of his actions when he shot at the door.

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Nevertheless, Masipa has since suggested that the prospect of a successful appeal is not remote.
Lawyers for Pistorius, have until 17 September to file a response to the prosecution’s appeal. The date for the appeal, expected to be sometime in November, will then be set by the president of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. If the conviction is escalated to murder, Pistorius – who is due to be released on correctional supervision on Friday – will face a minimum sentence of 15 years.

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