Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Af­ter spend­ing 14 years in prison, a woman,  who ad­mit­ted to mur­der­ing her boyfriend dur­ing an ar­gu­ment over her al­leged in­fi­deli­ty, has been re­leased. 

Tene­ka Granger was re­leased by High Court Judge De­van Ram­per­sad, last Fri­day, af­ter he re­viewed the sen­tence she re­ceived when she plead­ed guilty to the of­fence in Oc­to­ber 2023. 

Granger was ac­cused of mur­der­ing Dwayne "Hop­pie" Hills on April 6, 2012. 

Hills, who walked with a limp as one of his legs was longer than the oth­er, was stabbed and slashed sev­en times in his head, neck, face, shoul­der and el­bow. 

When she was ar­rest­ed, Granger, who was 17-years-old, con­fessed to stab­bing Hills af­ter he ac­cused her of cheat­ing on him. 

She claimed that she was de­fend­ing her­self as Hills had threat­ened to kill her and forced her to drink a quan­ti­ty of gaso­line be­fore she at­tacked him with a knife. 

Hills' next door neigh­bour claimed that the cou­ple had a tur­bu­lent re­la­tion­ship and that he saw Granger hold­ing the knife while ar­gu­ing with Hills be­fore he (Hills) was at­tacked. 

An­oth­er neigh­bour claimed that he saw Granger at­tack­ing Hills with a cut­lass sev­er­al weeks be­fore. 

Granger en­tered a guilty plea af­ter re­quest­ing a max­i­mum sen­tence in­di­ca­tion (MSI). 

She was spared the manda­to­ry death penal­ty for mur­der as she was a mi­nor at the time of Hills mur­der. 

She was in­stead sen­tenced at the Court's plea­sure with a min­i­mum term of two and a half years be­fore pos­si­ble re­lease.  

In de­cid­ing the min­i­mum term, Jus­tice Ram­per­sad be­gan with a start­ing sen­tence of 23 years in prison be­fore de­duct­ing two years based on the fact that she had a clean crim­i­nal record be­fore com­mit­ting the crime, her age and her ex­em­plary dis­ci­pli­nary record whilst on re­mand await­ing tri­al. 

Granger was giv­en a one third dis­count based on her guilty plea and the 11 and a half years she spent on re­mand was de­duct­ed. 

When Granger's sen­tence re­cent­ly came up for pe­ri­od­ic re­view to de­ter­mine whether she was fit for re­lease, her lawyers Michelle Ali and Aleena Ram­jag, of the Pub­lic De­fend­ers' De­part­ment (PDD)  re­ferred to a land­mark Court of Ap­peal de­ci­sion deal­ing with the sen­tenc­ing of ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers from Oc­to­ber, last year. 

In the judg­ment, the Ap­peal Court ruled that ju­ve­nile of­fend­ers ac­cused of mur­der can­not be sen­tenced to an in­de­ter­mi­nate prison term and should re­ceive de­fin­i­tive sen­tences. 

Ali and Ram­jag sug­gest­ed that Granger should be re­leased as she al­ready com­plet­ed the min­i­mum term and ap­peared ready to rein­te­grate in­to so­ci­ety. 

They not­ed that she had suc­cess­ful­ly com­plet­ed al­most two dozen ed­u­ca­tion­al and be­hav­iour­al pro­grammes whilst on re­mand and Granger served as a ra­dio broad­cast­er at the Women's Prison in Arou­ca. 

"The Pris­on­er no longer pos­es a risk to so­ci­ety and as such, it ap­pears that there is no use­ful pur­pose for fur­ther in­car­cer­a­tion," they said. 

Jus­tice Ram­per­sad agreed as he quashed her sen­tence de­tain­ing her at the Court's plea­sure. He al­so found that a re­lease on li­cence un­der the pro­vi­sions of the Chil­dren's Act was un­nec­es­sary. 

The Of­fice of the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP)  was rep­re­sent­ed by Des­ti­nee Gray and Maki­ra Mendez.