Legal experts say Olympian Oscar Pistorius has finally run out of options to appeal his 13-year prison sentence for the murder of Reeva Steenkamp.
South Africa’s highest court dismissed Pistorius’ request to review the prison sentence yesterday [Macau time], bringing a close to a five-year legal saga surrounding the man who was once one of the world’s most celebrated athletes.
“There is nothing they can do,” said Pierre de Vos, a constitutional law expert at the University of Cape Town.
Last year, the Supreme Court of Appeal more than doubled Pistorius’ six-year sentence for the murder of Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model, who he shot four times through a locked bathroom door in his home on Valentine’s Day 2013.
The minimum sentence for murder in South Africa is 15 years, and the court called the initial six-year sentence “shockingly lenient.”
The double-amputee runner, who is 31, claims he mistook his girlfriend for an intruder.
Pistorius was originally convicted of manslaughter, which was overturned and replaced with a murder conviction by the Supreme Court. He has also tried and failed to appeal his murder conviction in the Constitutional Court. AP
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