South African paralympian Oscar Pistorius, freed on parole last month
after serving a fifth of his prison term for killing his girlfriend,
faces years more in jail if state lawyers can get his conviction scaled
up to murder from culpable homicide.
Prosecutors will argue before the Supreme Court that a high court judge
was wrong to let Pistorius off the more serious charge after he fired
four shots through a door on Valentine's Day 2013, killing Reeva
Steenkamp.The 28-year-old track star will not be present at the one-day hearing in
Bloemfontein, 400 km (250 miles) southwest of Johannesburg, his lawyer
Barry Roux told Reuters.
A panel of five judges will hear the appeal, and could either order a
retrial, convict Pistorius of murder themselves or reject the
prosecution's appeal, legal experts have said.
"The (high) court not only approached the circumstantial evidence
incorrectly, but also incorrectly excluded relevant evidence,"
prosecutors said in documents filed at the court.
Pistorius, dubbed "Blade Runner" because of the carbon fibre prosthetic
blades he uses to compete, denied deliberately killing his girlfriend
during his six-month trial, saying he mistook her for an intruder at his
home.
Prosecutors said Pistorius intended to kill Steenkamp, who they said fled to the toilet during a row.
But high court Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled last year that the state had
failed to prove intent or "dolus eventualis", a legal concept that
centres on a person being held responsible for the foreseeable
consequences of their actions.
The state insists Masipa misinterpreted some parts of the law and that
Pistorius must have known that the person behind the door could be
killed.
A murder conviction would result in a minimum sentence of 15 years in prison.
After the trial last September, Pistorius, a gun enthusiast, was also
convicted of firing a pistol under the table of a Johannesburg
restaurant but was let off on charges of illegal possession of
ammunition and firing a gun out of a car sun-roof.
The athlete was freed two weeks ago in line with South African
sentencing guidelines that say non-dangerous prisoners should spend only
a sixth of a custodial sentence behind bars.
He has not been seen in public since then and is under house arrest that
confines him to his uncle's home in a wealthy Pretoria suburb for the
duration of his sentence.
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