Oscar Pistorius to be handed new sentence for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp

He is guilty of murder, and the matter is referred back to trial court to decide sentencing.

Leach said the courts would take into account time already served in the sentencing. He said re-trial would have been “wholly impractical” for both sides.

The austere cell is set apart from the main prison in an area with a room for just one other inmate. “The identity of his victim is irrelevant to his guilt”. Prosecutors alleged the two had a fight and he shot Steenkamp intentionally through the door of the bathroom cubicle. Yet he reconciled himself to the possibility and did so anyway.

He said that the sprinter “never offered an acceptable explanation for” shooting Steenkamp through a bathroom door in his home.

Pistorius, who was not be present in court in Bloemfontein, South Africa’s judicial capital, now faces a minimum of 15 years in prison for murder.

In an interview with NBC’s TODAY, June Steenkamp said Pistorius’ murder conviction was “a day of happiness for the women in South Africa”.

As Pistorius offered cautious – and contradictory – answers about his state of mind when he fired, Nel barked that he would do better to listen carefully to the questions and try to answer as honestly as he could.

The judge added that Pistorius did “not take that most elementary precaution of firing a warning shot”.

He also witheringly described Pistorius’ often tearful trial testimony as “vacillating and untruthful”.

“I hope I can have some time with him and a quiet chat”.

Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was a baby but who went on to become a global sporting hero, was not at the court session in Bloemfontein, about 400 kilometres south-west of Johannesburg.

He could appeal on the basis that his Constitutional rights have been violated.

“The argument is that where there’s been a mistake in law that’s been made – that is the only reason that an incorrect verdict has been reached – it would be offensive to the interests of justice in order to allow that verdict to stand”, she said. In doing so he must have foreseen that the person he was firing at behind the door might be fatally injured. The case has attracted worldwide interest and continues to fascinate and divide South Africa.

Pistorius has long maintained that he thought there was an intruder in his house the night he killed Reeva Steenkamp, a model he’d been dating for three months. This is followed by five days of often intense cross-examination where Pistorius steadfastly denied any intention to kill Steenkamp.

SOUTH Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal has found Oscar Pistorius guilty of murder, accepting the state’s appeal to change the previous culpable homicide verdict. He spent one year out of his five-year sentence in jail.

“I’m satisfied with everything now”, Barry Steenkamp said.

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