{South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has been denied leave to appeal against his conviction for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.}<\/p>\n
The Constitutional Court has made the ruling, meaning Pistorius will now be sentenced in April.<\/p>\n
Pistorius killed Ms Steenkamp in February 2013 after firing four times through a locked toilet door.<\/p>\n
A manslaughter verdict was overturned in December and a murder verdict introduced in its place.<\/p>\n
South Africa’s National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said the Constitutional Court found “no prospect of success” in Pistorius’ appeal.<\/p>\n
The case will now go back to Judge Thokozile Masipa – who cleared the athlete of murder in the original case – for sentencing on 18 April.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors are believed to be targeting a sentence of at least 15 years in jail for Pistorius.<\/p>\n
This is the end of the road for Oscar Pistorius. The Constitutional Court was his last chance to overturn his murder conviction.<\/p>\n
Many in the country felt that judge Thokozile Masipa had erred when she convicted him of a lesser charge, but some still believed Pistorius had not intended to kill anyone, let alone Reeva Steenkamp.<\/p>\n
Now a full bench of the country’s most powerful judges has ruled that Pistorius’ latest bid has no chance of succeeding.<\/p>\n
The next step now is for the two legal teams to present their arguments about the length of his sentence – and the state wants no less than 15 years.<\/p>\n
He is currently under house arrest after spending one year of his original five-year sentence in jail.<\/p>\n
In December, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the lower court under Judge Masipa had not applied correctly the rule of dolus eventualis – whether Pistorius knew that a death would be a likely result of his actions.<\/p>\n
Justice Eric Leach said that having armed himself with a high-calibre weapon, Pistorius must have foreseen that whoever was behind the door might die, especially given his firearms training.<\/p>\n
Pistorius has always maintained he believed he was shooting at an intruder.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{South African athlete Oscar Pistorius has been denied leave to appeal against his conviction for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.} The Constitutional Court has made the ruling, meaning Pistorius will now be sentenced in April. Pistorius killed Ms Steenkamp in February 2013 after firing four times through a locked toilet door. A manslaughter verdict was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-23659","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23659"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23659\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23659"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23659"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23659"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=23659"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=23659"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}