‘Broken’ Oscar Pistorius suffering from ‘major depression,’ doctor says

Convicted murderer and former Olympian Oscar Pistorius is a “broken” man who should hospitalized instead of jailed, a psychologist testifying in his defense said Monday at a sentencing hearing in South Africa, the BBC reported.

The new Pistorius trial is before the same judge, Judge Thokozile Masipa, who initially acquitted Pistorius of murder and Pistorius’ lawyers are arguing for leniency.

Barry and June Steenkamp, the parents of the model Pistorius killed by shooting multiple times through a toilet door in the pre-dawn hours of Valentine’s Day 2013, were also present in court.

In December, however, the Supreme Court upgraded the “culpable homicide” conviction to murder after ruling the original trial judge had made a “fundamentally flawed” judgement.

Psychologist Prof Jonathan Scholtz testified that Pistorius had negative experiences while he was in prison for 10 months, including his stumps being infected because he had to sit in the shower for the first five months of his imprisonment.

Mr. Nel, a famously bulldog cross-examiner, was skeptical of the claim that Mr. Pistorius was too weak and lethargic to testify in court.

The blade runner had enrolled in a correspondence course for a degree at the London School of Economics and had been offered a job with a charity working with children in Africa, Scholtz added.

He faces a minimum 15-years in prison.

Pistorius had also had temper tantrums in jail and had once banged a table when he got upset with a nurse, Mr Nel said, asking Dr Scholtz why he had ignored Pistorius’ actions.

No, Pistorius is at his uncle’s mansion under house arrest.

But following Pistorius’s culpable homocide verdict, prosecutors appealed to the Supreme Court of Appeal saying that the former athlete should have been found guilty of murder. Nel said Pistorius has not shown any remorse throughout the trial and only regretted that the killing had affected him personally.

Pistorius, 29, wept in the dock.

In 2012, Pistorius became the first amputee to compete in the Olympics. He claimed he thought she was a burglar, the state claimed he killed her deliberately after a row. A judge will hear arguments from both the defense and prosecution and is expected to hand down a sentence later this week. “We are calling for the 15 years without parole”.

Experts say a custodial sentence seems nearly unavoidable but factors such as his mental state, disability and good behaviour may lead to a reduced jail term.

During day one of sentencing proceedings, Oscar Pistorius’s psychologist revealed that the paralympian had admitted to intentionally shooting whomever would have been on the other side of his bathroom door.