The request for parole of the former South African Paralympic champion Oscar Pistorius, convicted of the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, ??was refused on Friday March 31. In a brief memo obtained by Agence France-Presse, and dated Tuesday, this court explains that the sentence imposed begins from the date of his conviction in 2017 and not from his first conviction in 2014. release will be “re-examined in a year,” Tania Koen told AFP.
The prison services informed, to everyone’s surprise and in a brief press release, that the refusal was linked to the fact that the convict had not yet served a sufficient part of his sentence to be able to obtain an early release. “The detainee has not completed the minimum detention period, as determined by the Supreme Court of Appeals,” the last instance to convict Pistorius in 2017 after multiple appeals, the statement said.
South African law provides that a person convicted of murder can benefit from early release once half of his sentence has elapsed. The parents of Reeva Steenkamp, ??who was a model, were opposed to her early release, believing that Oscar Pistorius never told the truth. “I don’t believe her story,” the visibly distressed mother, June Steenkamp, ??told reporters crowding around the car in which she arrived at the prison to attend the commission hearing.
She did not testify in front of the murderer of her daughter, the commission having decided to hear the latter in a second time, specified her lawyer Tania Koen. The hearing was a “painful” moment for the victim’s parents who have been living “a life sentence” since their daughter’s violent death, Koen said. “They miss her every day. They “believe he should not be released” because “he has shown no remorse and he is not rehabilitated because if he was he would have been honest and told the true story of what happened that night,” she insisted.
The commission was responsible for “determining whether the objective of imprisonment has been achieved”, explained the prison administration, by examining the behavior of the inmate, his physical and mental state as well as the risk of recidivism. Following the refusal of his release, Oscar Pistorius can request a reconsideration of his request.
In the early hours of Valentine’s Day, February 14, 2013, Pistorius fired a rifle through his bedroom bathroom door. Reeva Steenkamp, ??29, who came to spend the night at his home in Pretoria, was shot four times. Rich, famous, the six-time Paralympic champion had entered the legend of sport a year earlier by aligning himself with the able-bodied in the 400 meters at the London Olympics, a first for a double amputee.
“Blade Runner”, his nickname in reference to his carbon prostheses, was arrested in the early hours. He had pleaded misunderstanding, explains that he believed that a burglar had managed to break into his ultra-secure residence. During his trial, broadcast live on television for eight months in 2014, the ex-star appeared in tears, even vomiting when reading the autopsy report. He had been sentenced to five years in prison for manslaughter.
The prosecution, finding the justice too lenient, appealed to demand a conviction for murder. The legal saga had kept the media spellbound and the world is passionate about this extraordinary case. On appeal, Pistorius appeared before the judges on his stumps. A psychologist called by the defense describes a “broken” man. He was then sentenced to six years in prison for murder. The prosecution considering, once again, the sentence insufficient. In 2017, the Supreme Court of Appeal sentenced him to 13 years and 5 months in prison. Dropped by her sponsors, ruined, the fallen idol sold her house to pay her lawyers.
