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Oscar Pistorius Granted Parole in January

After eleven years of ups and downs in his legal travails for fatally shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, former Paralympian champion Oscar Pistorius will be released on parole on January 5, 2024. The BBC's Top Ten Moments in Oscar's trial is a good summary. If you want to read the play-by-play as it happened, with legal analysis, check out my 40-plus posts covering the case from bail hearings, through trial, sentencings and first appeals. [More...]

His first trial ended in September, 2014 with a verdict by Judge Thokozile Masipa acquitting him of murder but finding him guilty culpable homicide, (manslaughter). She sentenced him to 6 years in prison. He served one year of the sentence in a maximum security prison, and in October, 2015, was released to house arrest.

Meanwhile, the state was appealing the trial judge's dismissal of the murder charge. Two months after he was released to house arrest, the Appeals court overturned the trial judge's verdict and declared Oscar guilty of murder on the original murder charge.

He was resentenced to 13.5 years (instead of 15 years) in prison, because had already served 1.5 years in prison and on home arrest on the culpable homicide conviction.

His first time up for parole in March, 2023, the Department of Corrections decided he hadn't served 50% of his sentence, and wasn't eligible for parole. (All inmates in South Africa are eligible for parole after having served half their sentence.) The technical details:

The problems have arisen over the 2017 ruling by South Africa's Supreme Court of Appeal to increase his murder sentence. The court said it was sentencing him to 13 years and five months and not the mandatory minimum of 15 years for murder in South Africa because it took into account the one year and seven months he served after the manslaughter conviction between late 2014 and mid-2016.

But the Supreme Court didn't take into account another year and four months Pistorius served in prison between when he was first sentenced for murder in July 2016 and when the Supreme Court increased his sentence in November 2017, lawyer Knight said. That extra year and four months makes Pistorius eligible for parole now, the lawyer said.

Oscar appealed and won. In other words, he should have been released last March.

He will be released on January 5, 2024, with a lot of conditions. He will be living with his uncle. His parole doesn't end until December, 2029.

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    I sure do remember the TL discussions (none / 0) (#1)
    by sarcastic unnamed one on Fri Dec 01, 2023 at 10:55:32 AM EST
    of Pistorius. They went into crazy detail regarding the details of the shooting, various bruhahas about the judges, etc., etc. He's only 37, let's hope he straightens his life out.