Judge Thokozile Masipa arrives in court

The judge, flanked by her two assessors and four police officers slowly made her way to her chair.

Pistorius stood in the dock, hands folded in front of him looking at as she walked.

His psychologist Dr Lore Hartzenberg was seated next to one of his lawyers Brian Webber.

Masipa began by discussing how she decided the sentence.

“The decision on sentence is mine and mine’s alone,” she said.

“The court is duty bound to consider the seriousness of the offence of the accused.”

On September 12, Pistorius was convicted of culpable homicide on for the Valentine’s Day 2013, shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in his Pretoria townhouse. The court found him not guilty of murdering Steenkamp.

Pistorius shot Steenkamp through the locked door of the toilet, apparently thinking she was an intruder about to emerge and attack him.

She was hit in the hip, arm, and head.

Pistorius was found guilty of firing a pistol under a table at Tasha’s restaurant in Johannesburg in January 2013. He was found not guilty of shooting through the open sunroof of a car in Modderfontein on September 30, 2012, and of illegal possession of ammunition.

– Sapa

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