Athlete applies to take case to South Africa’s constitutional court after his earlier conviction for culpable homicide was overturned
Oscar Pistorius has applied for leave to appeal to South Africa’s constitutional court in a last-ditch attempt to overturn his murder conviction for shooting dead his girlfriend in 2013.
He is facing a minimum jail term of 15 years, which may include time already spent behind bars. In October he was released to live under house arrest after serving one year of his original five-year sentence.
Andrew Fawcett, a member of Pistorius’s legal team, said: “The application has been served on the director of public prosecutions. They will now indicate when they will be opposing the application and what the grounds of opposition will be. Then we wait for the constitutional court to make a ruling on whether or not they will hear the appeal.”
Pistorius has been on bail awaiting a new sentence since December, when judgesfound him guilty of murder, overturning his earlier conviction on the lesser charge of culpable homicide for killing Reeva Steenkamp.