×

We've got news for you.

Register on SowetanLIVE at no cost to receive newsletters, read exclusive articles & more.
Register now

Oscar TV interview should have been done after sentencing: panel

The expert panel assembled by MNet’s Carte Blanche for Oscar Pistorius’s first TV interview since he shot and killed his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February 2013 expressed some reservations about the timing of the interview.

Pistorius’s interview with journalist Mark Williams-Thomas on UK commercial TV network ITV on Friday comes less than two weeks before he is due to be sentenced for her murder.

Also read: Pistorius explains what happened in TV interview: 'I went down on my knees and pulled her on to me'

Pistorius was initially convicted of culpable homicide for the killing and sentenced to a five year prison term in 2014.

On appeal by the State‚ the Supreme Court of Appeal set aside the culpable homicide conviction and replaced it with that of murder in December last year.

The appeal court sent the matter back to the high court in Pretoria for the imposition of a new sentence for murder.

Arguments in mitigation and aggravation of sentence were heard by the high court in Pretoria earlier this month and Pistorius did not testify.

Pistorius will be sentenced by Judge Thokozile Masipa on July 6.

Advocate Mannie Witz‚ one of the panel members‚ said it would have been a good idea to do the interview after the sentencing had been done.

Former Zimbabwen high court judge Chris Greenland said the interview muddied the waters.

“Judge Masipa will be judged by the public on what they see in a commercial product. It is a little bit discomfiting.”

Clinical psychologist Leonard Carr described the interview as a public relations exercise.

“He has never really owned the consequences of his behaviour.”

Greenland said as experts‚ they had never been able to make out what Pistorius’s defence had been.

The Supreme Court of Appeal‚ when it set aside the culpable homicide conviction with that of murder‚ also said Pistorius’s version of events varied substantially.

“At the outset he stated that he had fired the four shots ‘before I knew it’ and at a time when he was not sure if there was somebody in the toilet.

“This soon changed to a version that he had fired as he believed that whoever was in the toilet was going to come out to attack him.”

The SCA said Pistorius later changed this to say that he had never intended to shoot at all; that he had not fired at the door on purpose and that he had not wanted to shoot at any intruder coming out of the toilet.

“In the light of these contradictions‚ one really does not know what his explanation was for having fired the fatal shots‚” the SCA said in a judgment by Judge Eric Leach.

 

 

TMG Digital

 

Would you like to comment on this article?
Register (it's quick and free) or sign in now.

Speech Bubbles

Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.