SOUTH AFRICA - OSCAR PISTORIOUS RETURNS TO COURT FOR THE FINAL SENTENCING PHASE OF HIS TRIAL

Oscar Pistorius is back in court on Monday.

Judge Thokozile Masipa will hear pre-sentencing arguments from Pistorius’s lawyers and the state.

Pistorius was last seen in public at a court hearing in April when the date of the sentencing was announced.

The Paralympian is to be sentenced for murder, after the Supreme Court of Appeal overturned his manslaughter conviction.

The state says it will seek the minimum 15-year sentence prescribed by law.

While defence lawyers will argue there are exceptional and compelling reasons why Judge Masipa should give him a lesser jail term.

Pistorius was released from jail last October to live under house arrest at his uncle's mansion in Pretoria after serving one year of his five-year sentence for culpable homicide.

He killed his model girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.

Pistorius maintained that he believed he was protecting himself and Steenkamp from an intruder, when he fired four shots into his toilet door, killing her.

Judge Thokozile Masipa ultimately accepted his account of what happened in the early hours of Valentines Day 2013, finding him guilty of culpable homicide.

Pistorius’s sentencing will mark the final chapter in an often sensational court drama, but for everyone attached to this tragic and terrible story, the pain and grief of Reeva Steenkamp’s death is as real now as it was three years ago.

VIA - enca.com