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Oscar Pistorius sentence overloads Twitter with wrong jail sentence, misspellings and #NoJustice hashtag trending in UK

Social media users annoyed with the verdict also starting posting under the #ThingsLongerThanOscarsSentence hashtag

James Vincent
Tuesday 21 October 2014 15:36 BST
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Fame, such as that enjoyed by Oscar Pistorius, creates the illusion you have no responsibilities
Fame, such as that enjoyed by Oscar Pistorius, creates the illusion you have no responsibilities

The shameful, soap opera nature of Oscar Pistorius's trial has come to a confused climax on Twitter as the disgraced athlete was sentenced to five years in prison this morning.

Pistorius was found guilty of culpable homicide - not murder - with prosecutors protesting that he should serve 10 years in prison.

The press scrum surrounding Pistorius as he exited the Pretoria High Court this morning was echoed by indignant reaction onlines, with the #NoJustice and #ThingsLongerThanOscarsSentence hashtags trending in the UK, as well as various misspellings of Pisotrius' name, the most common being 'Oscar Pistorious'.

The outrage was also salted with a fair measure of confusion as reporters were misled by Judge Thokozile Masipa’s one-hour verdict.

Judge Masipa's decision to spell out the details of previous judgements apparently led some news outlets to believe Pistorius had been sentenced to three years, not five - with publications including the Daily Mail leaping on the first verdict they heard, even if it was just hypothetical.

Pistorius’s own defence team also came under fire after claiming that the disgraced athlete will spend no more than a year behind bars, serving the rest of his sentence under house arrest.

Here’s a selection of some of the comments online:

And for those gathering under the (slightly) wrong banner:

And some from the #ThingsLongerThanOscarsSentence hashtag:

Many of those expressing disgust at the verdict are also comparing the five year sentence with the "worth" of Steenkamp's life. As The Independent's Christopher Hooton points out, this sort of logic can be dangerous.

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