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Johannesburg — The National Prosecuting Authority has filed papers to appeal former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius’ culpable homicide conviction.
“We have filed at about 12:00,” said spokesperson Luvuyo Mfaku.
Lawyers for Pistorius, who is to be released on correctional supervision on Friday, will have until September 17 to file a response, Mfaku explained.
The president of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein will then be approached for a date for argument, expected to be sometime in November.
A media frenzy has already started to build ahead of the release of Pistorius, who shot dead his model and law graduate girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp through a bathroom door at his home on Valentine’s Day in 2013.
During his trial, he said he thought there was a burglar in the toilet cubicle, before he squeezed off the four fatal shots through the locked door.
He was found guilty of culpable homicide last year by Judge Thokozile Masipa after a trial that attracted massive local and international attention, as the feted athlete cried and vomited through harrowing testimony of Steenkamp’s final moments.
The State wants to appeal the conviction, because it believes he should have been convicted of murder, and if it is successful, his sentence could be amended to a longer one.
When Pistorius is released from Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria on Friday, he will have served 10 months of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide after the Correctional Supervision and Parole Board decided in June to grant his release.
The papers filed are relatively short, because the appeal will be confined to Masipa’s interpretation of the law. — Sapa
Online Reporter