KP delighted over Oscar Pistorius’ murder verdict

Leach said the court was entitled to set aside the conviction of culpable homicide and order a retrial, but the appeals court found that a retrial was not in the interests of justice and instead imposed the murder conviction.

South Africa’s top appeals court ruled Thursday that Oscar Pistorius, the Olympic star known as the Blade Runner, was guilty of murder in the 2013 killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, overturning a lower court’s conviction on the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Pistorius was released under house arrest on 19 October after serving less than a year of his original sentence, in line with South African guidelines that say non-dangerous prisoners should spend only one-sixth of a custodial sentence behind bars.

The case has been referred back to the trial court in Pretoria for a new sentence.

KIM LUDBROOK/EPA Oscar Pistorius has been convicted of murder by an appeals court.

According to the South African law, the minimum sentence for murder is 15 years in prison.

“It saddens me that 20 years after my sister Nicole’s murder, we are still seeing the same crimes, just different names, over and over again”, she said.

As a matter of common sense at the time the fatal shots were fired, the possibility of the death of the person behind the door was clearly an obvious result. He said re-trial would have been “wholly impractical” for both sides.

In the original trial, Judge Thokozile Masipa sided with the weaker offence, claiming the prosecution had failed to prove Pistorius had killed Steenkamp with intent, or “dolus eventualis”, a legal concept that centres on a person being held responsible for the foreseeable consequences of their actions.

Reeva Steenkamp’s mother, June says justice has now been done.

“The legal team will study the finding and we will be guided by them in terms of options going forward”, a Pistorius family spokeswoman said in a brief statement.

Mr Barry Steenkamp, Reeva’s father, welcomed the new verdict.

– Running on carbon fibre prosthetic blades which earn him the nickname “Blade Runner”, Pistorius becomes a Paralympic gold medallist over 200m in Athens in 2004.

Ms Anneliese Burgess, the Pistorius family’s spokesman, said the family would wait for the lawyers’ advice on what to do next.

The case triggered fierce debate in South Africa about violence against women, and activists from the ruling party’s women’s league packed the public benches throughout the long case.

In their appeal, prosecutors argued Pistorius should be convicted of murder for firing four shots through a locked toilet door.

The appeal that landed Pistorius back in prison is as seemingly complicated as the case itself.