South Africa asks appeal court to convict Pistorius of murder

Pistorius has since been released from the Kgosi Mampuru II prison and placed under correctional supervision, after completing roughly one sixth of his sentence. “Under the concept of dolus eventualis in South African law, a person can be convicted of murder if they foresaw the possibility of someone dying through their actions and went ahead anyway”.

The state is, however, confident that the manslaughter conviction will be overturned, she added.

Pistorius, once an athletic golden boy, does not deny shooting Steenkamp to death through his bathroom door, but he has maintained that he thought there was an intruder there. They argued that whoever was behind it, was in fact irrelevant.

Mr Nel also argued that Judge Masipa unjustly discarded circumstantial evidence about what happened in the run-up to the shooting, including Steenkamp’s inside-out jeans found lying on top of the discarded duvet on the bedroom floor: evidence, he said, of her being out of bed and dressing during a row. He said he carried her downstairs and that she died shortly afterward.

Nel criticised the fact that Pistorius offered different explanations for firing into the toilet door.

“When he fired the bullets, did he know there was somebody behind the door?” These defenses then exclude one another.

Prosecutors said Pistorius should be convicted of murder and sent back to jail, while the defence argued that the sentence the athlete had received was appropriate and should stand.

He said the “very restricted” size of the cubicle meant there was little chance of survival for anyone inside it. “There was no place to hide in there”.

The Supreme Court of Appeal has reserved judgment on the state’s bid to challenge the athlete’s culpable homicide conviction.

Bundles of paperwork from the two legal teams were handed into the court months ago.

A panel of five judges will hear the arguments from the state and defence, with the proceedings scheduled to last one day.

Nel said Masipa had taken a fragmented approach in evaluating circumstantial evidence, including failing to consider Mangena’s evidence.

For Judge President Lex Mpati and judges Nonkosi Mhlantla, Eric Leach, Steven Majiedt and Elizabeth Baartman, the primary questions, say legal experts, are principles of law and their application.

“I’m going to lose”, Roux said, reports the BBC.

“But in the same breath you can’t give any person with a general anxiety disorder a licence to shoot”, remarked Judge Elizabeth Baartmans.

Johan Engelbrecht, a former acting judge, told The Citizen that Pistorius is unlikely to face a new trial.

At his lengthy trial, Judge Thokozile Masipa appeared to accept the paralympian’s story, clearing him of murder and convicting him of manslaughter instead.

He said that had Masipa taken into account all of the state’s witness’s evidence, it would have rendered Pistorius’ version of events totally impossible.