A judge in South Africa refused on Friday to grant prosecutors permission to appeal the six-year prison sentence she gave the double-amputee sprinter Oscar Pistorius, saying an appeal would not have a reasonable chance of success.
Mr. Pistorius, who is serving the prison sentence for the murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in 2013, did not appear in court.
Last month, the judge, Thokozile Matilda Masipa of the High Court in Pretoria, gave Mr. Pistorius a six-year term, far shorter than the 15-year minimum sought by prosecutors.
She cited mitigating factors, including Mr. Pistorius’s disability, his expressions of remorse, his status as a first-time offender and the circumstances of the shooting.
Mr. Pistorius has said that he thought he was shooting at an intruder, not his girlfriend, when he fired through the locked door of a bathroom in his home in a gated community in Pretoria.
Prosecutors had called the sentence “shockingly too lenient,” and the ruling surprised most South African legal experts, who had predicted that Mr. Pistorius would get at least 10 years in prison.
“I’m not persuaded that there are reasonable prospects of success on appeal or that another court may find differently,” Judge Masipa said on Friday, dismissing the prosecutors’ application for leave to appeal.
Her decision is not necessarily the last word in the matter. The National Prosecuting Authority may now directly petition the Supreme Court of Appeal to hear the case.
The agency’s press office did not immediately respond on Friday to calls and emails seeking comment on whether it intended to do so. The chief prosecutor in the case, Gerrie Nel, declined to comment, Reuters reported.
Judge Masipa found Mr. Pistorius guilty of manslaughter in 2014, and she sentenced him to five years in prison.
After prosecutors appealed, the appeals court concluded that Judge Masipa had erred and convicted Mr. Pistorius of murder. The appeals court then ordered Judge Masipa to give Mr. Pistorius a new sentence.
