Oscar Pristorius Slammed With A 5yr Prison Term For Culpable Homicide


Could this really be justice...fair judgement?!

Oscar Pistorius has been sentenced to five years in prison for the culpable homicide of Reeva Steenkamp, whom he shot dead on Valentine's Day last year.

In a court in Pretoria, Judge Masipa also handed Pistorius a three-year sentence, suspended for five years, for negligently discharging a firearm in a crowded restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013.

The two sentences will run concurrently.

The prosecution had wanted Pistorius to serve at least ten years in prison, while his own lawyers had argued that he should serve a three-year community-based sentence, such as 16 hours of domestic cleaning a month.

Immediately after the verdict was read out, members of the athlete's family told reporters that there would be no appeal against the sentence, and that they expected Pistorius to go directly to prison. His legal team said their understanding was that he will have to serve ten months, one sixth of his sentence, in prison before being considered for house arrest.

However, Nathi Mncube, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, suggested Pistorius would have to serve at least one third of the prison sentence, around 20 months, in jail. He added that the NPA has an "appetite" to appeal but has not made a decision to do so yet. Both sides have two weeks in which to lodge an appeal.

The prospect of Pistorius leaving jail within a year provoked outrage on Twitter, with the hashtag #Nojustice trending worldwide.
Sky News reporter Robert Nisbet said the overwhelming reaction on the streets of Pretoria was also negative. "He took the soul of another person. How can that be right?" one man said outside the court.
But Reeva Steenkamp's mother June says justice has been served. She told reporters "it doesn't matter" that Pistorius could be out of prison in ten months. "He's going to pay something," she said.
Pistorius's family also said they were satisfied with the sentence and added that the athlete will "embrace this opportunity to pay back to society".
Professor Stephen Tuson, of Wits School of Law, told News24 it would be "inadvisable" for Pistorius to appeal against the sentence as he "got off lightly" for culpable homicide.
Masipa sentenced the athlete to a maximum imprisonment of five years for killing Reeva and a concurrent three-year prison sentence, suspended for five years, for discharging a firearm in a Johannesburg restaurant in January 2013.
In The Independent, Chris Maume says Masipa "might have shown mercy, but she has delivered perfect justice". A non-custodial sentence would have "sent the wrong message" that if you are famous enough, you can get away with manslaughter, while a longer hail sentence "would have felt like grandstanding", says Maume.
But in The Guardian, Simon Jenkins thinks Pistorius should not be going to jail at all. Masipa's argument was "meticulously reasoned", says Jenkins, but "beyond the cause of consistency, imprisoning Pistorius can serve no purpose".
He describes imprisonment as "brutalism" and says no one will be more or less deterred by the length of his sentence.
"Finding why he behaved as he did, and working to prevent others doing likewise, would be the most useful outcome of his crime. That is unlikely to happen in a prison." 
I wonder what the family of the deceased thinks? What's your take on this?



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