Oscar Pistorius, the disabled South African track star, sat in court with his head bowed on Friday as his defense lawyer made an impassioned plea to keep him out of prison after killing his girlfriend last year, saying “no punishment can be worse” than his anguish since the shooting.
Before the killing of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Feb. 14, 2013, the lawyer, Barry Roux, said on the fifth day of the sentencing phase of Mr. Pistorius’s trial, “he was on the rise; he was like an icon.”
Since then, he had become “a person who’s down and out.”
“He’s not only broke; he’s broken,” he said. “There’s nothing left of this man.”
His pain was “deep and permanent,” Mr. Roux said. “No punishment can be worse than the last 18 months.”
The lawyer was speaking at televised hearings in the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, the South African capital, that will determine what sentence Mr. Pistorius, 27, will receive after Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa convicted him last month of culpable homicide – equivalent to manslaughter.
She acquitted him of more serious murder charges after he said he shot Ms. Steenkamp, a 29-year-old model and law graduate, by mistake in the belief that an intruder had entered his home.
Defense witnesses have urged that, in light of his disability as a double amputee since infancy, Mr. Pistorius should be sentenced to house arrest coupled with community service. Mr. Roux urged the judge to heed the African tradition known as ubuntu, which has many meanings but usually signifies the idea that many together are stronger than one alone.
The athlete was not “a person racing down the street, consciously committing a crime,” Mr. Roux said. “There has to be compassion.”
The prosecution says he should go to prison. Both Mr. Roux and the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, have promised to wrap up their arguments on sentencing on Friday, although Judge Masipa has not said when she will hand down her sentence.
Culled from "The New York Times"
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