South African prosecutors are appealing for a longer sentence for Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius for murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.<\/p>\n
They told the Supreme Court of Appeal the six-year sentence was “shockingly light” and he should get 15 years.<\/p>\n
Defence lawyers say the sentence handed down by a lower court is appropriate.<\/p>\n
Pistorius claimed he shot dead Ms Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day in 2013 after mistaking her for a burglar at his home in the capital Pretoria.<\/p>\n
The lower court justified deviating from the prescribed 15-year sentence by saying mitigating circumstances such as rehabilitation and remorse outweighed aggravating factors such as his failure to fire a warning shot.<\/p>\n
But prosecutor Andrea Johnson said the sentence did not match the gravity of the crime.<\/p>\n
Pistorius, 30, is not in the court in Bloemfontein. He is being held at the Atteridgeville Correctional Centre prison in Pretoria.<\/p>\n
He was initially given a five-year term for manslaughter in 2014, but was found guilty of murder on appeal in 2015.<\/p>\n
Pistorius shot Reeva Steenkamp four times through a locked toilet door in February 2013.<\/p>\n
Previously, the six-time Paralympic gold medallist had made history by becoming the first amputee sprinter to compete at the Olympics, in 2012 in London, running on prosthetic “blades”.<\/p>\n
He had his legs amputated below the knee as a baby.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
South African prosecutors are appealing for a longer sentence for Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius for murdering girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp. They told the Supreme Court of Appeal the six-year sentence was “shockingly light” and he should get 15 years. Defence lawyers say the sentence handed down by a lower court is appropriate. Pistorius claimed he shot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2040,481],"class_list":["post-368076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-oscar-pistorius","tag-south-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=368076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=368076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=368076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=368076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}