South African prosecutors reject Oscar Pistorious' appeal to overturn his murder conviction in Constitutional Court. Prosecutors said his appeal was "contrived" and have "no reasonable prospect of success".
The Guardian reported that the former Olympian applied for leave to appeal to South Africa's constitutional court in his last attempt to reverse his murder conviction after shooting dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013. The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) found him guilty of murder in December 2014. This is a reverse to the Preoria high court's decision in 2014, where he was only convicted of manslaughter or culpable homicide.
According to Eyewitness News, State Prosecutor Andrea Johnson's affidavit supports the Supreme Court's decision against the claims of Pistorious' lawyers using dolus eventualis.
Pistorious' lawyers still maintains their claims that the SCA ignored the fact that he was a person with disability and acted out of fear when he open fired, believing it was an intruder behind the toilet cubicle door. Johnson said Pistorious' team didn't reference any case to prove their dolus eventualis argument.
However, the appeals court argued that regardless who he thought the person behind the door was, he should have thought that someone could be killed if he fired his weapon. NDTV Sports wrote that the National Prosecuting Authority filed papers on Monday opposing Pistorious' appeal, saying "It is our respectful submission that the SCA committed no errors of law and that the arguments by the applicant are without merit and contrived."
State Prosecutor Johnson said that the double-amputee only has himself to blame for the negative rulings against him. Even the state prosecutors argue that the dolus eventualis case that the defense team has presented is a totally foreign interpretation.
Pistorious shot and killed his girlfriend, who was a model and a law graduate, on Valentine's Day in 2013. He said he thought she was an intruder, so he shot four times. After serving one year of his jail time, he was later on released in October and lived under house arrest in Pretoria.
His next sentencing schedule will be on April 18. The 29-year-old athlete could get imprisoned for at least 15 years.
