Paralympic gold medalist Oscar Pistorius wept openly on Wednesday as he removed his prosthetic legs and moved around the courtroom while his lawyer tried to prove his vulnerability the night he shot Reeva Steenkamp.
“It’s 3 o’clock in the morning. It’s dark. He’s on his stumps. That’s all common cause. He suffers from anxiety disorder. We know that the untested evidence [was] when he was on his stumps his balance was seriously compromised. On his own he would not have been able to defend himself,” defence counsel Barry Roux said during sentencing proceedings in the high court in Pretoria.
“We saying we entering the field of sentencing. Look at that man’s conduct. Was his fear rational?
Roux argued that the events that unfolded in Pistorius’s Pretoria home on Valentine’s Day in 2013 when he shot dead his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp should be considered in the context of his disability.
“The time has come we must look…at least with unbiased eyes.”
Pistorius faces a 15 year jail term for murder, unless his defence team can convince the court substantial and compelling circumstances exist to deviate from this.
In 2014, Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide and sentenced to five years in jail. He was released under correctional supervision in October last year after serving a year of his sentence.
However, the Supreme Court of Appeal in December last year overturned the trial court’s decision, converting his conviction to murder, meaning the trial court had to re-sentence Pistorius.
– African News Agency (ANA)
