Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of murder after a South African appeals court overturned an earlier manslaughter verdict.<\/p>\n
He killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 after shooting her four times through a locked toilet door.<\/p>\n
He is currently under house arrest after spending one year of his five-year sentence in jail.<\/p>\n
Pistorius will now have to return to court for a new sentence to be decided.<\/p>\n
It was earlier incorrectly reported that the court had ruled the manslaughter verdict would remain.<\/p>\n
South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the lower court did not correctly apply the rule of dolus eventualis – whether Pistorius knew that a death would be a likely result of his actions.<\/p>\n
Reading the ruling reached by a panel of judges, Justice Lorimer Leach said that having armed himself with a high-calibre weapon, Pistorius must have foreseen that whoever was behind the door might die.<\/p>\n
Pistorius’ lawyer argued that he believed that there was an intruder in the house but the judge said that the identity of the person behind the door was irrelevant.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has been found guilty of murder after a South African appeals court overturned an earlier manslaughter verdict. He killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 after shooting her four times through a locked toilet door. He is currently under house arrest after spending one year of his five-year sentence in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":171632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[38,14],"yoast_head":"\n