Judge to review woman's sentence for killing boyfriend at 17

A HIGH COURT judge is expected to review the sentence of a former teenage killer next month to determine if she is to serve out the remaining two and a half years.

Justice Devan Rampersad ordered the preparation of various reports by November 4, so he can review Teneka Granger’s sentence.

This will be done ahead of the three-year interval which was set out in the Chuck Attin ruling in 2005 as the fixed period for reviewing the sentence for a youth offender convicted of murder.

Granger, now 28, pleaded guilty to the murder of Dwayne Hills, her then-boyfriend, on April 6, 2012. She was 17 at the time.

The judge had invited submissions from Granger’s attorney public defender Michelle Ali and prosecutor Veonna Neale-Munroe on whether the old law, of sentence by the court’s pleasure, or the new law, which allows a judge to set a determinate term of years, should apply in this case.

Taking into consideration various factors, the judge chose to sentence Granger under the old law of the court’s pleasure.

Granger, also called Aneka, Neka and Smally, had also requested a maximum sentence indication (MSI), or the sentence tshe is likely to receive if they plead guilty, and accepted it, since the death penalty could not be imposed on her.

Rampersad began with a sentence of 23 years, from which two years were deducted for her good character, her age at the time she killed Hills, and efforts at rehabilitation. Granger received a further seven-year deduction from her sentence for her guilty plea and remorse, and the 11 years and six months she spent on remand awaiting trial were also subtracted from her sentence. That left her with two years and six months to serve.

The judge will, however, review the reports, once received, and decide whether Granger should be immediately released on probation or should serve out her term.

In a plea for mitigation, Ali pointed to Granger’s rehabilitation efforts. Granger is a broadcaster on the women’s prison radio station and completed her CXC studies as well as a number of courses in grow box, hydroponics, anger management and life skills, among others.

According to the evidence, a neighbour heard the couple quarrelling at Hills’ home at Maloney Avenue, Plantation Road, Valencia. The neighbour said Hills accused Granger of “having a next man and telling her to leave” his place.

Three hours later, the quarrelling continued and turned physical. The neighbour saw Granger with a big silver knife in her hand and heard noises from inside the house. After putting himself in a position to see all that was taking place, he saw Hills run out of the house holding his throat, with blood running from his neck, covering his clothes.

Hills, who was also known as Hoppie because he walked with a limp, as one of his legs was longer than the other, fell in the middle of the road. As he fell, Granger came out of the house with the bloodied knife in her hand.

The neighbour heard her tell Hills, "It f--king good for you, you mother c---, I tell you don’t come around me, I shoulda kill you.”

She then called Hills’s sister and told her, “Look, I now stab up your brother there, it good for him,” and to call for an ambulance for him.

Hills’s sister saw her brother’s lifeless body on the ground with blood pumping from a wound on his neck and a big cut on his face which was also bleeding. She told the police her brother had been suicidal at one point because of the quarrelling between him and Granger.

Hills’s aunt said Granger came to her home covered in blood and told her to call the ambulance because she had stabbed Hoppie. She said the couple were also fighting and once, Hills asked her husband for poison. Her husband also told police that a month before, he had seen Granger hit Hills with a piece of iron and cuff him.

None of the prosecution said they smelled gasoline on Granger. However, at the police station, the police detected a slight smell of it and Granger said she had drunk some. She also told the officers she had been defending herself.

“The man make me drink gasoline,” she said. In an interview, she said Hills told her “is better” he killed her and then himself.

She said he made her drink the gasoline and that she needed to leave.

“When I was preparing meself to leave I was separating my clothes. He come and he tell me I can't leave.”

She said Hills got a knife and tried to chop her. It fell to the ground, and she picked it up and tried to stab him in self-defence. She said they wrangled for a while and then Hills “got stabbed on his neck and he was telling me to 'cool it, sorry, sorry.'

“I stab him in his neck and other places but I did not see where I stab him. In shock, I drop the knife and he ran outside.

“I ran outside behind him to ask for help. When he ran outside he fell back down in the road, and while I ran outside I saw the neighbour outside and I told her I stab him, and if she could take him to the hospital."

She wrote and signed a statement in which she said on the morning of the incident, Hills had told her he had a dream she was cheating on him with a man from Cumuto.

The statement also recounted her version of the events she told the officers during her interview.

An autopsy said Hills died of seven stab/slash wounds to the head, neck (which proved to be the fatal wound), face, left shoulder and elbow.

The pathologist opined that it was most probable that Hills was attacked from behind, because of the injuries to the back of his head, and when he turned around, was stabbed in the neck.

A toxicology report showed there were cannabinoids in Hills’s urine.