At 10.32am, an hour after she started reading her decision, Judge Thokozile Masipa paused for an instant, turned a page and said to Oscar Pistorius: “Please rise.”
“The sentence I impose on the accused for the murder of the deceased … is six years imprisonment,” Masipa said.
A small gasp went up from the back of the courtroom, where supporters of the South African Olympic and Paralympic athlete sat alongside campaigners who had pressed for a long custodial sentence.
Pistorius, who killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, by firing four bullets through a closed toilet door in February 2013, showed no emotion and, after a brief embrace from his sister, was led down to the cells.
It was a curiously uneventful end to a trial that has included intense drama, emotion and controversy over more than three years.
State prosecutors had demanded the mandatory minimum proscribed in South Africa for murder, 15 years, saying a strong deterrent message was needed in a country that suffers from extremely high levels of violent crime, often involving firearms.
They may still challenge Masipa’s decision to impose a significantly lower term, but currently this looks unlikely.
Doup De Bruyn, a lawyer and a representative of the Steenkamp family, said they respected the judge’s decision and would maintain “a dignified silence”.
“There is nothing we can do about the sentence. Nothing will bring Reeva back,” De Bruyn said.
Pistorius, who found global fame when he reached the semi-finals of the 200m sprint at the 2012 Olympics in London, arrived at Gauteng high court in Pretoria looking anxious, but healthier than during sentencing hearings last month.
Relatives of the former athlete and his victim filled a bench at the front of the courtroom. Barry and June Steenkamp, Reeva’s parents, sat only metres from the man who killed their daughter.
Masipa said the evidence she had heard convinced her that Pistorius was “not a violent person”, was unlikely to re-offend and had showed remorse.
Pistorius, she said on Wednesday, was “a fallen hero who has lost his career and been ruined financially. Having killed someone he loved … he cannot be at peace”.
The judge said she had to balance the interests of society, the accused and the relatives of the victim, but stressed that a court should not seek to satisfy public opinion.
Her original decision to convict Pistorius of culpable homicide, or manslaughter in English law, prompted a public outcry. It was overturned by the supreme court last year.
“The court has a duty to correct wrong impressions and prevent unjustified outrage,” she said, although punishment must also reflect the seriousness of the offence and be “unpleasant, uncomfortable and painful”.
Under South African law, Pistorius, who has been living in his uncle’s large home in a suburb of Pretoria after being released into house arrest last year, will be eligible for parole long before the end of the new sentence.
Pistorius, 29, was a hero to many in South Africa and across the world. He landed a series of lucrative sponsorship deals with leading brands and was labelled the “blade runner”, a reference to the carbon-fibre prosthetics he used to compete.
But the fairytale story of tenacity and talent overcoming disability ended abruptly in the early hours of 14 February 2013, when Pistorius, whose lower legs were amputated when he was 11 months old, shot Steenkamp dead with a 9mm handgun.
Tens of millions around the world followed the trial that ensued. Almost every minute of more than 40 days of psychological drama, police procedural and legal argument was broadcast live on South African television – and massively amplified by social media.
Pistorius denied deliberately shooting Steenkamp, claiming that he believed a burglar was hiding in the toilet in his home. Prosecutors said he killed Steenkamp in a jealous rage.
The trial revealed a dark side to Pistorius: a taste for fast cars and guns, and a short temper.
In court on Wednesday, Masipa said she accepted the defence’s version of events, but stressed that “murder is always a very serious crime … the fact that the accused thought it was an intruder does not make it any less serious”.
She described Steenkamp as “young, vivacious, full of life and hopes for the future”.
On the final day of the three-day sentencing hearing last month, Pistorius removed his prosthetics to hobble on his stumps across the courtroom, to demonstrate his physical vulnerability.
His defence lawyers argued that, although he appeared to be an “Olympian superman”, the athlete was a deeply anxious person.
A day before, in an emotional testimony, Barry Steenkamp, the 73-year-old father of the victim, said Pistorius should “pay for his crime”.
With his hands shaking and his voice trembling, Steenkamp described the intense pain of bereavement. He made no comment after the sentencing on Wednesday.
Anneliese Burgess, a spokesperson for the Pistorius family, said the trial had been a “long, drawn-out process”.
“To a certain extent, there is relief that this is the last chapter, that they won’t be coming back,” she told reporters outside the courthouse.
Carl Pistorius, the accused’s brother, said on social media that “justice has been done”, while defence lawyers said they were satisfied with the sentence.
Commentators say the killing and the trial held a mirror to South Africa more than 20 years after the end of apartheid and the advent of democracy.
“In the same way that [Nelson] Mandela was the symbol of the country in the glorious years of generosity and pragmatism and all those good things, the cataclysmic fall [of Pistorius] was a metaphor for broader disappointed dreams,” John Carlin, who attended the trial and has written a book on the former athlete, told the Guardian last month.
Campaigners for women’s rights in South Africa expressed disappointment at the sentence.
“The judgment is an insult to women. It sends the wrong message,” said Jacqui Mofokeng of the African National Congress Women’s League, who has attended much of the trial.
Jeanine Terreblanche, a 28-year-old IT specialist, travelled 186 miles (300km) from her hometown of Welkom to “show support for Oscar”. She said the decision was “fair”.
“I still believe it was an accident, and I think he has been through more than any other person who has ever committed this kind of offence, especially with the media interest and public opinion and the criticism of the campaigners,” Terreblanche said.
Around her, the scores of photographers and newspaper reporters covering the trial slowly dispersed, while police kept onlookers away from dozens of television journalists still broadcasting from the busy Pretoria street.
