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Oscar Pistorius

Johannesburg. — The Constitutional Court did not believe that Oscar Pistorius would be successful if he appealed his murder conviction. It was based on this that the highest court in the land dismissed the former Paralympian’s application for leave to appeal the Supreme Court of Appeal’s (SCA) decision to convert his conviction of culpable homicide to murder.

“It has been concluded that the application should be dismissed for lack of prospects of success,” the Constitutional Court said in its order dated March 2.

Pistorius, who is currently out on R10 000 bail, is expected to return to the High Court in Pretoria on April 18 for sentencing proceedings.

He faces a minimum of 15 years in jail for murder, unless he provides substantial and compelling reasons to deviate from this prescribed sentence. On Valentine’s Day in 2013, he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp claiming he mistook her for an intruder hiding in the toilet of his Pretoria home.

Pistorius has already served one sixth, or 10 months, of the five-year sentence he was handed for culpable homicide. He was released from jail in October last year. —News24.