Lawyers for jailed South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius have launched a legal bid to prevent prosecutors from appealing against his acquittal on murder charges.<\/p>\n
[contextly_sidebar id=”iSFwGGiSaTNB1mPr1xhY2YJ2Rsf2sKEh”]Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled in December that prosecutors could appeal against the acquittal.<\/p>\n
She had sentenced Pistorius to five years in prison for the lesser charge of culpable homicide, or manslaughter. Pistorius shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013.<\/p>\n
He said he mistook her for a burglar, while prosecutors argued that he shot her after a row at his upmarket home in the capital, Pretoria.<\/p>\n
The double amputee athlete was acquitted by Judge Masipa of both premeditated murder and the lesser murder charge of dolus eventualis, also known as common-law murder.<\/p>\n
In South African law, this charge applies if the accused knew they might kill someone but still went ahead with their course of action.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors argued that Judge Masipa misinterpreted the law when she cleared Pistorius of murder on the basis that he did not intentionally shoot Ms Steenkamp.<\/p>\n
Giving them permission to appeal in December, she said: \u201cI cannot say\u2026 that the prospect of success at the Supreme Court of Appeal is remote.\u201d<\/p>\n
The BBC\u2019s Milton Nkosi in Johannesburg says that defence lawyers are now challenging the judge\u2019s decision, and do not want the culpable homicide verdict to be overturned.<\/p>\n
On 13 March they will appear before Judge Masipa and intend to cite previous cases to back their argument that the appeal should not be allowed.<\/p>\n
Pistorius was one of South Africa\u2019s most celebrated sportsmen until his arrest. He made history by becoming the first amputee sprinter to compete at the Olympics in London in 2012.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Lawyers for jailed South African Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius have launched a legal bid to prevent prosecutors from appealing against his acquittal on murder charges. [contextly_sidebar id=”iSFwGGiSaTNB1mPr1xhY2YJ2Rsf2sKEh”]Judge Thokozile Masipa ruled in December that prosecutors could appeal against the acquittal. She had sentenced Pistorius to five years in prison for the lesser charge of culpable homicide, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":94269,"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":[],"tags":[3,38],"class_list":["post-94268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-ghana-news","tag-palaver-newspaper"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94268","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\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/94269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}