A South African court has refused to allow Oscar Pistorius appeal against his murder conviction.
The former Olympic and Paralympic athlete was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, after shooting her through a bathroom door in February 2013.
He had previously been found guilty of manslaughter but this was overturned by a High Court Judge in December 2015.
And the country’s highest court on Thursday ruled that Pistorius had “no reasonable grounds of success” in his appeal.
The case will now go back to Judge Thokozile Masipa – who cleared the athlete of murder in the original case – for sentencing on April 18.
Prosecutors are believed to be targeting a sentence of at least 15 years in jail for Pistorius.
He is currently under house arrest after spending one year of his original five-year sentence in jail.
In December, South Africa’s Supreme Court of Appeal ruled that the lower court under Judge Masipa had not applied correctly the rule of dolus eventualis – whether Pistorius knew that a death would be a likely result of his actions.
Justice Eric Leach said that having armed himself with a high-calibre weapon, Pistorius must have foreseen that whoever was behind the door might die, especially given his firearms training.
But Pistorius has always maintained he believed he was shooting at an intruder.
