A court in South Africa on Friday more than doubled the prison sentence for Oscar Pistorius to 13 years and five months for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, model Reeva Steenkamp.
Pistorius, who gained fame as a double-amputee runner who competed in the 2012 Olympics, fatally shot Steenkamp four times through a closed bathroom door at his home in Pretoria in the early hours of Valentine’s Day in 2013. Pistorius claimed he thought Steenkamp was an intruder.
Under a 2015 murder conviction, Pistorius was sentenced to six years in prison.
On Friday, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal called that sentence “shockingly lenient,” and more than doubled it after unanimously upholding an appeal by prosecutors, the Associated Press reported.
Under the new sentence, the earliest Pistorius will be eligible for parole is 2023, according to the AP.
The lengthened sentence was another twist in a protracted legal battle over the case.
Pistorius, 31, was originally convicted in September 2014 of culpable homicide, or manslaughter in the United States, and later sentenced to five years in prison.
“I am of the view that a noncustodial sentence would send the wrong message to the community, but a long sentence would not be appropriate because it would lack the elements of mercy,” Judge Thokozile Masipa said at the sentencing.
In 2015, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal overturned Masipa’s culpable homicide conviction and instead found Pistorius guilty of murder, a more severe charge that, under South African law, carries a minimum sentence of 15 years.
The decision sent Pistorius back to court for resentencing. Masipa, the trial judge, sentenced Pistorius to six years in prison for murder, effectively only adding a year to his culpable homicide sentence. The decision shocked many who had expected a sentence of between 10 and 15 years, with credit for time already served.
Still, Masipa said she had found reasons for the lighter sentence:
Among the mitigating factors cited by Masipa were that Pistorius was vulnerable at the time of the shooting, walking on his stumps rather than his prosthesis; that he believed the person in the bathroom was an intruder and that he had taken genuine steps to save her life after realizing what he had done.
In addition, she said, he had demonstrated remorse, apologizing to Steenkamp’s parents in the courtroom, after they had refused to see him and accept his apology in person.
He remains, she said, “a good candidate” for rehabilitation. In addition, she said, “he has already spent some time,” 12 months, serving his original sentence. And, she added, he is not a violent person.
It remains to be seen if Friday’s decision by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal will mean the end of Pistorius’s legal saga. According to the AP, his lawyers can still challenge the lengthened sentence with South Africa’s Constitutional Court.
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