Pretoria - Oscar Pistorius will not be appealing his six year sentence. High court Judge Thokozile Masipa sentenced the former paralympian on Wednesday for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
Andrew Fawcett, an instructing attorney in the defence team, said Pistorius will not appeal his sentence.
“We respect the decision made by Masipa and we won’t be lodging any applications for leave to appeal going forward. Oscar will serve his sentence as handed down by Judge Masipa,” Fawcett said.
The former athlete served one year in jail after he was found guilty of culpable homicide. The Supreme Court of Appeal overturned the culpable homicide conviction in December last year and upgraded it to murder.
ANC womens league spokeswoman Jackie Mofokeng said Pistorius’s sentence was an insult.
“Today is a sad day, the sentence is an insult to the women and to the Steenkamp family. We have moved from the culpable homicide which was five years, and then you come to murder and add one and it becomes six years, it’s really devestating,” Mofokeng said.
Mofokeng added that they are planning to take the judgement to the ANC headquarters: “We want our legal team to look at the matter and see what we can learn from this. We are policy makers, if there is something to change we must change it now.”
A spokesman for the Steenkamp family said they were not ready to comment on the matter.
African News Agency