Former Paralympic and Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius’ prison sentence for murdering his girlfriend was more than doubled to 13 years and five months by South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal on Friday.
Supreme Court Justice Willie Seriti said the court upheld an appeal against what prosecutors called Pistorius’ “shockingly” lenient original six-year sentence for the shooting at his home in 2013, at a hearing in the central city of Bloemfontein.
Seriti said the 31-year-old athlete should have been sentenced to the prescribed minimum of 15 years for murder, as he delivered the verdict.
The new sentence took into account time Pistorius had already served in prison and at home under house arrest, Seriti said. Pistorius has served over a year of his initial six-year sentence.
Pistorius killed Steenkamp when he repeatedly shot through a bathroom door in his home in the capital Pretoria in the early hours of Valentine’s Day 2013. The ensuing trial gripped the world.
Pistorius claimed he mistook Steenkamp for an intruder and was initially convicted of manslaughter. That conviction was overturned and replaced with a murder conviction by the Supreme Court in 2015.
The only way for Pistorius’ lawyers to challenge the new sentence is to appeal to the Constitutional Court.
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