Johannesburg - The NPA said on Friday it was happy the
court had refused to entertain Oscar Pistorius's challenge of the State's
appeal against his culpable homicide conviction.
"The court could not go back on its word,"
National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) spokesperson Velekhaya Mgobhozi told
reporters outside the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg.
Pistorius is serving a five-year sentence after Judge
Thokozile Masipa found him guilty of culpable homicide following the killing of
his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp.
The Paralympian shot Steenkamp dead through a locked
bathroom door at his home in Pretoria on Valentine's Day in 2013, claiming he
mistook her for an intruder.
The State wants Pistorius's conviction to be that of
murder, with a harsher sentence.
In December, Masipa dismissed the State's application to
appeal Pistorius's sentence, but agreed to grant it leave to appeal his
conviction.
On Friday, Pistorius's lawyer Barry Roux requested that
Masipa reverse her decision to allow the State to appeal the conviction.
Masipa struck the case from the roll.
Ruling on the matter on Friday, she said: "I am not
satisfied that this is the correct court to hear this application.
"For one thing, there is really nothing new in the
submissions by counsel for the applicant. In my view, to entertain this
application will be tantamount to reviewing my own decision.
"And I also think that procedurally it would be
wrong to grant or refuse this application.
"Accordingly, the order that I grant in this matter,
is to strike off the application," she said.
The matter will now be heard by the Supreme Court of
Appeal (SCA).
Mgobhozi said the State had until May to file the court
transcripts to the SCA and would be given a further eight weeks to file its
heads of argument.
It was not known when the SCA would finally hear the
matter, as the registrar still needed to provide a date.
Pistorius, who will be eligible for parole after serving
a sixth of his sentence (10 months), has already spent five months behind bars.
It is possible the matter will reach the SCA only after August, by which time
Pistorius could be out on parole.
Mgobhozi said this was out of the State's control. It
would continue with the appeal regardless whether Pistorius was granted parole.
"We'll still go ahead," he said.
