D-Day for Oscar Pistorius
Wednesday is D-Day for South Africa’s former Paralympic gold medallist Oscar Pistorius who will be sentenced in the North Gauteng High Court for the 2013 murder of his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
A murder conviction carries a minimum sentence of fifteen years, unless there are substantial and compelling circumstances to impose a lesser sentence.
Pistorius was released from prison in October last year after serving a year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.
But that conviction was overturned in December and instead converted to murder by the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein.
Pistorius was convicted of fatally shooting Steenkamp on Valentine’s Day, 2013. Believing she was an intruder, he shot her four times through the locked toilet door of his en-suite bathroom at his Pretoria home.
Judge Thokozile Masipa, who presided over the original trial, will re-sentence him on Wednesday.
During sentencing proceedings in June, the court heard mitigating and aggravating factors.