Johannesburg - Oscar Pistorius has an anxious month ahead of him, as he faces a potential 15-year prison sentence after his Constitutional Court bid to overturn his murder conviction failed on Thursday.
And while his family have kept mum about the sentencing set to take place on April 18, his brother Carl took to Twitter on Thursday night to post a single word: “Shattered.”
S h a t t e r e d .
— Carl Pistorius (@carlpistorius) March 3, 2016
Family spokeswoman Anneliese Burgess said on Friday morning that the athlete’s family would not comment on the Constitutional Court decision at this time.
In early December, the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein overturned Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction and found him guilty of murder for killing girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
In a brief judgment, Judge Eric Leach found Pistorius to have been indirectly murderous in his actions by firing four shots into a closed door when not knowing who or if anyone was behind it.
Pistorius’s legal team vowed to take the SCA’s decision to the Constitutional Court to overturn it. However, the Constitutional Court registrar revealed in a statement on Thursday that the court had chosen not to hear the matter.
Read: #OscarPistorius sentencing set for April 18
Also read: The end of the road for Oscar Pistorius?
In a statement from the Office of the Chief Justice, the reason given for dismissing the appeal proceedings was “for lack of prospects of success”.
Pistorius was convicted by Judge Thokozile Masipa in the Pretoria High Court at the end of 2014 for the culpable homicide of Steenkamp, whom he allegedly mistook for an intruder at his Pretoria East home on Valentine’s Day 2013.
However, since the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the culpable homicide conviction, and the Constitutional Court appeal rejection, the case will now return to the high court in Pretoria, before Judge Masipa, next month.
Judge Masipa will again hear both the State and Pistorius’s defence teams argue in aggravation and mitigation of sentence respectively, before she sentences Pistorius, this time for murder, dolus eventualis. Legal expert Dr James Grant told The Star the athlete would probably argue similar facts to those in his original sentencing.
Read: Oscar’s appeal bid fails
When Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide, four witnesses testified calling for a light sentence. Being a double amputee, his life of anguish and his fall from grace, his mental health and previous charity work were all argued in a bid for a non-custodial sentence.
The fact that Pistorius had served about a year in jail could help lower his potential murder sentence, said Grant.
National Prosecuting Authority spokesman Advocate Luvuyo Mfaku said the State would push for the maximum sentence of 15 years.
The Star