LONDON — A South African judge ruled on Wednesday that prosecutors may appeal her decision to acquit Oscar Pistorius, the disabled track star, on murder charges in the killing of his girlfriend last year.
But, in a complex ruling, Judge Thokozile Matilda Masipa rejected efforts by state prosecutors to appeal against the five-year sentence she passed on him.
The prosecution had called the sentence “shockingly inappropriate” to the crime since Mr. Pistorius could be released into house arrest after 10 months in the hospital wing of a prison in Pretoria, the South African capital.
In October, Judge Masipa acquitted Mr. Pistorius of murder but found him guilty of culpable homicide, equivalent to manslaughter, for firing four rounds from a handgun through a locked toilet cubicle door, killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on the other side.
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The judge’s ruling on Wednesday hinged on a distinction in South African law between culpable homicide, equivalent to manslaughter, and a form of murder when a defendant is accused of knowing that his actions may cause death.
On Tuesday, the state prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, argued that Mr. Pistorius must have understood the likely outcome of opening fire and that he had therefore committed a form of murder regarded as a more serious crime than culpable homicide but a lesser offense than premeditated murder, which carries a 25-year minimum sentence.
In a ruling streamed live on South African news websites, Judge Masipa said the issue was “not an easy one.”
On the sentence, she said she was “not persuaded that there was any material misdirection” when she sent Mr. Pistorius to prison for what some legal experts said seemed to be a relatively lenient sentence.
But on the grounds for her verdict, she said the Supreme Court should consider whether a principle known as dolus eventualis — the grounds for a form of murder — had been “correctly applied.”
“I cannot say the prospect of success at the Supreme Court is remote,” she said.