Oscar Pistorius Faces Return to Jail for His Lover’s Murder

Pistorius killed his girlfriend in 2013 Steenkamp after he mistook her for an intruder.

Oscar Pistorius shows off his skills. (Photo: iStockphoto)

South African Paralympic athlete Oscar Pistorius will appear in court on Monday for a hearing of a sentence which could send him back to jail for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp three years ago.

The double-amputee killed Steenkamp, a model and law graduate, in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013, saying he mistook her for an intruder when he fired four times through the door of his bedroom toilet.

In March, Pistorius’s lawyers failed in their legal bid to reverse a Supreme Court of appeal judgement that upgraded his original conviction from culpable homicide – the equivalent of manslaughter – to murder.

He was released from jail last October to live under house-arrest at his uncle’s mansion in Pretoria after serving one of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.

Since being convicted of murder, he has been on bail and allowed to leave the house at set times, but not travel further than 20 kilometres (12 miles) without permission.

The 29-year-old “Blade Runner” faces a minimum 15-year jail term for murder, but his sentence could be reduced due to time already spent in prison and mitigating factors, including his disability.

The case at the High Court in Pretoria was scheduled to last until Friday, though the sentence could be handed down earlier.

A lawyer close to the case said, on the condition of anonymity, that there would be evidence presented from both sides over the three days and the judge might come back to deliver sentence on Friday. 

Pistorius was last seen in public at a court hearing in April when the date of the sentencing was announced.

He has always denied killing Steenkamp in a rage and during his dramatic trial in 2014, sobbed in the dock as details of his lover’s death were examined in excruciating detail.

(This article was originally published by AFP)