Olympic athlete, Oscar Pistorius has been convicted of mrder after an appeal court overturned his earlier conviction for manslaughter in the death of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013.
He had earlier been handed a 5 year jail sentence, one of which was spent behind bars and the remainder he had begun serving on house arrest.
Speaking on behalf of the Supreme Court of Appeal, Justice Lorimer Eric Leach overruled the earlier decision, ruling that there was “fundamental error” with that judgment.
Leach stated that judge Thokozile Masipa, who gave the original verdict, misapplied the principle of “dolus eventualis” — a legal term relating to the intent of a suspect — and that elements of the ballistics evidence were “seemingly ignored by the trial court.”
He said that the sprinter “never offered an acceptable explanation for” shooting Steenkamp through a bathroom door in his home.
“I have no doubt that in firing the fatal shots the accused must have foreseen that whoever was behind door might die,” Leach said.
“This case involves a human tragedy of Shakespearean proportions,” the justice said in his opening remarks. “A young man overcomes huge physical disabilities to reach Olympian heights as an athlete. In doing so he becomes an international celebrity, he meets a young woman of great natural beauty and a successful model, romance blossoms, and then, ironically on Valentine’s Day, all is destroyed when he takes her life.”
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