Oscar Pistorius Found Guilty for the Murder of Former Girlfriend By Appeal Court

After what many persons saw as an original miscarriage of justice from the initial trial that was held, former Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius, has been found guilty of the murder of his former girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, by a South African appeals court. This means that his original verdict of manslaughter has now been thrown out.

Pistorius had only served one year of a five year sentence for the original manslaughter charge. Many were upset that this was an injustice both to Reeva's memory, and also to the number of abused women killed each year in South Africa by their partners.

Pistorius fired four shots into a closed bathroom door in February 2013, that resulted in the shooting death of his then girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, who was at the time locked in the bathroom.

Having been released from jail recently, the former blade runner athlete has been serving house arrest, after spending one year of his original five-year sentence behind bars. With this new verdict of murder, he will now have to return to prison.

In overturning the original manslaughter verdict, the appeal court in South Africa ruled that the lower court did not correctly apply the rule of dolus eventualis . i.e, whether Pistorius knew that a death would have resulted from his actions.

15 years is the minimum sentence for murder in South Africa.