The National Prosecuting Authority said on Monday South Africa’s state prosecutors will appeal the culpable homicide conviction and five-year jail sentence handed down last week on Olympic and Paralympic track star Oscar Pistorius. Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated as a baby but who ran on carbon fiber prosthetic limbs, was convicted of culpable homicide last month for the shooting of Reeva Steenkamp, a 29-year-old law graduate and model, at his luxury Pretoria home. Prosecutors failed to prove murder after the athlete said he fired in the mistaken belief an intruder was hiding behind the door, a defense that struck a chord with many people in a country with one of the world’s highest rates of violent crime.
