Oscar Pistorius is a South African sprint runner who became the first amputee to compete in the Olympics in 2012. In feb 2013, oscar admitted to shooting and killing his South African model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. on 19 August 2013 Oscar Pistorius was officially charged with the murder of Reeva.
The Paralympic champion admitted shooting her on Valentine’s Day but denied murder, saying he believed she was an intruder. On 12 September 2014, he was found not guilty of murder but guilty of manslaughter.
South African court will convene in June to determine Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius’s sentence for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, a judge said in Pretoria on Monday.
Pistorius’s lawyers last month failed in their final legal bid to reverse a Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) judgement that upgraded his conviction from culpable homicide — the equivalent of manslaughter — to murder.
“ Pistorius’s case is postponed to June 13, and it will be heard until June 17,Judge Aubrey Ledwaba told Pistorius. The former Paralympic champion, 29, faces a minimum 15-year jail term for murder, which may be reduced due to time he has already spent in prison.
He was released from jail in October to live under house arrest at his uncle’s property in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.
Appeal judges in December described his testimony at his trial in 2014 as “untruthful” and delivered a damning indictment of the original verdict.
They found him guilty of murder, overruling the culpable homicide conviction.
Pistorius’s lawyers tried to take the case to the Constitutional Court, the highest court in South Africa, but it declined to hear the matter.
Pistorius was last seen in public at a bail hearing in December, after which he was fitted with an electronic monitoring tag.
His legal team told the judge on Monday that the tag had been replaced three times but was often sending false alerts that he had left his uncle’s house.
Under his bail conditions, he has been allowed to leave the house at set times, but not travel further than 20 kilometres without permission.
“During the five days set down for sentencing procedures both sides will present their evidence, the judge will then go back to apply his mind before making his decision,” criminal lawyer Martin Hood said.
Pistorius denied killing Steenkamp in a rage and, during his trial, sobbed in the dock as details of his lover’s death were examined in excruciating detail.
“I was overcome with fear,” he told his trial. “Before I knew it, I’d fired four shots at the door.”
The year before he killed Steenkamp, Pistorius became the first double-amputee to race at Olympic level when appearing at the London 2012 games.
He has since lost his glittering sports career, lucrative contracts and status as a global role model for the disabled.
Steenkamp’s family previously welcomed his murder conviction and described his Constitutional Court appeal as a “delaying tactic” to stay out of jail.
