A judge in South Africa has refused an attempt by prosecutors to appeal against the six-year jail sentence imposed on Oscar Pistorius for murdering his girlfriend in February 2013. Prosecutors described the Paralympic athlete’s punishment as “shockingly lenient”, BBC reports.
Pistorius killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp after shooting her four times through a locked bathroom door in his home on Valentine’s Day in 2013. He received the 6-year sentence in July 2016 after a successful appeal by state prosecutors to upgrade his original conviction from culpable homicide to murder. (Full story HERE)
Thokozile Masipa said the application by state prosecutors to appeal against the sentence she imposed in July had no reasonable prospect of success. “I am not persuaded that there are reasonable prospects of success for an appeal,” she said in the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg.
Masipa’s ruling, just like the previous one, has been kicked against by many South Africans as seen by a couple of tweets below.
The prosecutors now have until 21 days to petition to the Supreme Court of Appeal in South Africa. However, the final decision to take the case to the Supreme Court will be decided by South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA).
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