Former Paralympian Oscar Pistorius is taking his fight for parole to the Constitutional Court.
Pistorius is currently serving a 15-year prison sentence for the 2013 murder of his model girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, who he shot through the bathroom door of his Pretoria East home on Valentine’s Day that year.
He’s made multiple unsuccessful parole bids in recent years, with the latest, which was in March, failing because according to the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA), he isn’t actually eligible yet.
He maintains, though, that he is.
In 2016, Pistorius was sentenced to six years behind bars for murdering Steenkamp but in 2017, the SCA increased this to an effective 13 years and five months on appeal.
Previously, it was understood that his sentence had still started in 2016 when the original one was handed down, though, which would have made him eligible for parole in March this year. And a parole hearing was convened accordingly.
But days before it sat, the SCA issued a communique indicating Pistorius’ sentence had in fact only started in 2017 when the final sentence was handed down, which would only make him eligible for parole in August next year. His application wound up being refused as a result.
In the papers he’s now filed in the Constitutional Court, though, he argues in essence that his prison sentence and the amount of time he has to serve before becoming eligible for parole have effectively been unfairly increased.
He said this was “clearly incorrect” and “untenable” and “leads to [his] incarceration without just cause”, which he further maintains “is an infringement of [his] … fundamental rights”.
-EWN
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