Will the Oscar Pistorius trial ever end?Even if he’s convicted, Oscar Pistorius could avoid prisonStephanie Findlay
August 24, 2014
For 41 days the trial of Oscar Pistorius has consumed South Africa. It has been broadcast live on a 24-hour television channel, filled countless pages in newspapers and dominated water-cooler conversations. On Sept. 11, Judge Thokozile Masipa will finally give her verdict on this country’s fallen athletic star. If found guilty of the premeditated murder of his girlfriend, the Paralympic gold medallist will face a minimum of 25 years in prison. Should he be found guilty of a lesser murder charge, the 27-year-old could still spend years behind bars. But legal analysts who have been closely watching the murder trial say there’s a chance Pistorius may avoid jail altogether if he’s convicted.
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Still, there are a couple of ways by which Pistorius might avoid prison. First, if he is found guilty of culpable homicide—a charge his lawyer suggested in his closing argument. That would require the court to accept Pistorius’s claim that he thought there was an intruder in his house. There is no set sentence for culpable homicide, says Booth. The sentence is at the judge’s discretion. But in that event, says Booth, “there is a good chance he may not be imprisoned.”
The defence team also laid the groundwork for both an appeal and a “reviewable irregularity,” the term in South Africa for a type of mistrial, says Stephen Tuson, a criminal law adjunct professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Roux could appeal the verdict on the facts of the case, such as arguing witness evidence was accepted when it should not have been. He could also argue that the live broadcast of the trial constitutes a reviewable irregularity that denied Pistorius a fair trial, says Tuson.
Early in the trial, Roux hinted at pushing for such a reviewable irregularity. “We were unable to call a number of witnesses because they refused, and didn’t want their voices heard all over the world,” he said. (Private forensic pathologist Reggie Perumal, who attended Steenkamp’s autopsy, did not testify for the defence—a glaring absence as a major component of the state’s case is that the model and law graduate was up and eating hours before she died, a fact that conflicts with Pistorius’s story that the couple was sound asleep.)
Roux could also claim the live broadcast, a first for South Africa, resulted in witnesses changing their stories after watching the proceedings on television. “I’m not saying anyone did this, but witnesses could tailor their evidence,” says Tuson, “and if that’s the finding of the court—that Pistorius did not get a fair trial—then it would just start again.”
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