A South African judge has cleared the way for prosecutors to seek a murder conviction against Oscar Pistorius, enabling an appeal that could dramatically increase his punishment for killing his girlfriend.
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Prosecutors welcomed the decision, which could see the Paralympian star sprinter receive a jail term of at least 15 years if the appeal is approved rather than the five years he received for manslaughter.
“Our argument was that he should have been convicted of murder, and then would have been sentenced to a minimum sentence of 15 years,” said the National Prosecuting Authority’s Nathi Mncube.
Original trial judge Thokozile Masipa granted prosecutors the leave to appeal, saying she could not rule out the prospect that a
challenge would succeed in the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Pistorius, 28, said he shot his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp four times through a locked toilet door in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013, believing she was an intruder.
Prosecutors argued that he deliberately killed the 29-year-old law graduate after an argument, and were furious that he could
spend less than a year behind bars if granted home leave.
Dup de Bruyn, a lawyer representing Steenkamp’s parents Barry and June said the couple felt that “justice must run its course –
they’re out of it now”.
He added: “Really it’s got nothing to do with them at this time. They don’t even want to try to influence it or say anything about it. They want to carry on with their lives, it’s as simple as that actually.”
The double-amputee athlete’s father Henke Pistorius, talking outside the court, said: “It should not have gone this far. Oscar is strong, he’s strong, he has to be strong, he grew up like that.
"There’s lots of things in life, especially for a man like him that is not fair.”
The view among legal experts was that it was important to get leave to appeal in order to restore faith in the ability to prosecute criminals in South Africa. Pistorius’s legal team declined to comment.