The family of Reeva Steenkamp described the Supreme Court of Appeal’s (SCA) decision to amend Oscar Pistorius’ prison sentence as profoundly “unfortunate”. Pistorius killed Steenkamp on Valentines Day in 2013 and he will be eligible for parole, a decade later, in March 2023.
Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide in 2016 but upon appeal to the SCA in 2017, his charge was elevated to murder.
The SCA amended its sentencing after it emerged that the murder judgment failed to take into account the more than 500 days Pistorius had already spent in prison, according to SABC News.
“The SCA now correcting its ruling in a decision that will have significance for both Pistorius and the family of Reeva Steenkamp,” said legal journalist Karyn Maughan.
She said the Steenkamp family’s lawyer said that no one had made them aware of the proceedings and the timing was “profoundly unfortunate”, as the eighth anniversary of Reeva’s death is approaching [February 14].
In 2017, when the SCA sentenced Pistorius for murder it more than doubled his initial sentence of six years for culpable homicide and increased it by 13 years and five months.
Picture: Cape Town Etc Gallery