LONDON — With a judge seeking to strike a balance between
mercy and retribution, Oscar Pistorius, the South African track
star, was sentenced Tuesday to five years in prison for killing
his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.
The athlete’s defense team said the law under which he was
punished calls for him to serve only one-sixth of the prison
term — 10 months — before he can be placed on house arrest.
He was also given a suspended three-year term on separate
firearms charges.
But some South African legal experts said the conversion of
prison time to house arrest was not automatic and required
negotiations with the correctional authorities. After serving
half the sentence, Mr. Pistorius can also apply for parole.
Ms. Steenkamp’s family said it was “satisfied” with the ruling,
although the National Prosecuting Authority said it had not yet
decided whether to appeal.
“I’m just glad it’s over,” June Steenkamp, the victim’s mother,
told reporters outside the courtroom.
Mr. Pistorius’s family said it was not planning to appeal. “We
accept the judgment,” Arnold Pistorius, the athlete’s uncle,
said in a statement, appealing to the news media to “let us
move forward” and “give us some degree of dignity and
privacy as we do so.”
“Oscar will embrace this opportunity to pay back to society,”
the uncle said.
After a trial that opened in March and that was initially set to
run three weeks, Mr. Pistorius seemed impassive as Judge
Thokozile Matilda Masipa ordered him to rise to hear his
sentence.
Just before he descended the courtroom steps to the holding
cells at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, the South
African capital, he clasped the hands of relatives but showed
little emotion. Earlier in the trial, there were times when he
wailed, wept and vomited.
The often-delayed hearings have been broadcast around the
world, captivating people in Mr. Pistorius’s own country and
abroad. Every word has been broadcast — some of it restricted
to audio coverage at the request of witnesses — and
journalists have chronicled the trial’s every twist and turn in a
barrage of Twitter feeds, dispatches, and televised interviews
and commentary.
Virtually since the moment of the shooting, Mr. Pistorius has
been free on bail, living in his uncle’s luxurious mansion. But
for now, Martin Hood, a South African lawyer, told Sky News,
Mr. Pistorius is a sentenced prisoner and will spend the night
in a cell at Pretoria’s main prison.
“It’s going to be a cold, harsh reality for him tonight,” Mr.
Hood said.
Live television images showed Mr. Pistorius being driven away
from the courtroom in an armored police van. Blue-uniformed
officers sat with him while others, in bulletproof vests, were
hanging from the rear.
In September, Judge Masipa found Mr. Pistorius, 27, guilty of
culpable homicide but she acquitted him on more serious
murder charges.
The prosecution had sought a 10-year jail term, while the
defense had requested that he be placed under house arrest for
three years and perform community service.
The disabled athlete has admitted killing Ms. Steenkamp, 29,
on Feb. 14, 2013, but he said he did so by mistake, firing four
rounds from a handgun through a locked toilet cubicle door in
the belief that an intruder had entered his home.
Judge Masipa spent 65 minutes summing up her decision
before telling the athlete, “Mr. Pistorius, please rise.”
Quoting at length from legal precedents, Judge Masipa said her
sentence was “about achieving the right balance —
proportionality.”
She was critical of the testimony of two defense witnesses, who
had recommended a sentence of house arrest with community
service. But she praised the testimony of Zach Modise, a senior
prison services officer who said that South African prisons
were equipped to deal with a disabled inmate’s needs.
Judge Masipa said a long sentence would lack “mercy,” while
a more lenient sentence would “send the wrong message to the
community.”
At the same time, she said, “the courts do not exist to win
popularity contests.”
“It would be a sad day for this country if an impression was
created that there is one law for the poor and disadvantaged
and another for the rich and famous,” she said.
“Righteous anger,” she said, “should not cloud judgment.”
Judge Masipa focused closely on the moment when, in the
early hours of Valentine’s Day last year, Mr. Pistorius rose
from his bed, grabbed a handgun loaded with so-called Black
Talon ammunition and fired four rounds.
Unlike similar cases involving negligence, she said, Mr.
Pistorius knew that “someone was behind the door” and his
“aim was to shoot the intruder.” He was trained in the use of
firearms, which imposed a “high degree of responsibility” on
him.
“The toilet was a small cubicle,” she said. “An intruder would
have had no room to maneuver or escape.” Such was the
degree of negligence that a noncustodial sentence, the judge
said, “would not be appropriate.”
As the trial neared its close, the defense made much of Mr.
Pistorius’s anguish and of his steep fall from being a
celebrated athlete to what it depicted as living in penury. He
was stripped of lucrative sponsorships and forced to sell
property and automobiles to pay legal bills.
Months before the shooting, Mr. Pistorius, nicknamed the
Blade Runner for the scythe-like curved prostheses he used
while competing, became the first disabled athlete to compete
against able-bodied contenders at the London Olympic Games
in 2012. He also competed in the Paralympic Games.
Shortly after the sentence was handed down in Pretoria on
Tuesday, the International Paralympic Committee said Mr.
Pistorius would not be permitted to compete in its tournaments
for the full five years of the term.

Culled from: the new york times.

Members of the South African Police Service with
Oscar Pistorius in the back of an armoured police
vehicle.

Oscar Pistorius is lead by an officer
into a holding cell after being
sentenced.

Parents of the late Reeva Steenkamp, June, front, and Barry back, leave court in Pretoria, South Africa, after Oscar Pistorius was handed down a five-year sentence.

Oscar Pistorius, rear right, is led to a waiting police vehicle to be taken to prison.

& I went to Uniport for 5yrs and I didn't kill anyone

nedu2000:
& I went to Uniport for 5yrs and I didn't kill anyone