Pretoria – Paralympian Oscar Pistorius lost a court bid on Friday to prevent the State from appealing his culpable homicide conviction in the Supreme Court of Appeal.
“I am not satisfied that this is the correct court to hear this application,” Judge Thokozile Masipa said.
“For one thing, there is really nothing new in the submissions by counsel for the applicant. In my view to entertain this application will be tantamount to reviewing my own decision.
“And I also think that procedurally it would be wrong to grant or refuse this application.
“Accordingly, the order that I grant in this matter, is to strike off the application.”
Conviction
Pistorius’s lawyers wanted to appeal Masipa’s decision granting the State leave to appeal his conviction in the Supreme Court of Appeal.
In September, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide for shooting dead his model and law-graduate girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
He fired four shots through the locked door of the toilet in his Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day 2013, apparently thinking she was an intruder. He was jailed for five years.
Earlier, prosecutor Gerrie Nel requested that Pistorius’s defence team not be granted permission to contest the State’s appeal of his conviction.
Nel said Masipa should not even give a ruling on the matter.
Appeal after an appeal
“This matter should not be granted,” Nel said, arguing that this would spark an appeal after an appeal.
He argued that if the court agreed to this, it would be reviewing its own ruling on the matter.
Masipa had granted the State’s application to appeal Pistorius’s culpable homicide conviction, but dismissed its application to appeal his five-year jail sentence.
The State wants him to be convicted on the more serious charge of murder.
Defence lawyer Barry Roux, however, said this was not an appeal of an appeal as portrayed by the State.
He argued they had a legal right to present their arguments on the matter.
