Johnson Smith renews call for review of sentencing rules after man gets 12 years for setting ex-girlfriend on fire

Senior Cabinet minister Kamina Johnson Smith has repeated calls for a review of Jamaica’s sentencing guidelines after a St Catherine man was sentenced to 12 years in prison for setting his former girlfriend on fire while she slept.

Johnson Smith, the foreign minister, raised the issue over the weekend in reaction to a news report on Friday's decision.

“I would be very interested to hear what the judge considered in delivering a sentence of 12 years for such a barbarous attack,” she wrote on social media site X on Saturday. "I completely empathise with her view that given the number of surgeries she has had to (and still has to) do, the number of years seems surprisingly low."

The minister was referring to Alecia King, the victim, who expressed disappointment that her attacker was not given more years in prison.

In a follow-up post on Sunday, the minister pointed to the operation of the guilty plea discount under the sentencing regime introduced in 2015, which she said she has long opposed.

“It appears that he pleaded guilty and therefore got the automatic discount introduced in 2015. I didn’t believe in it then and I don’t believe in it now,” Johnson Smith said, adding that the starting point for sentences must be sufficiently high "to still have justice served for the victim".

"My views are not privately held I have shared them before in Senate debates and elsewhere. I know I am not alone in thinking that the Sentencing Guidelines are overdue for review," she said.

The comments follow Friday’s sentencing of Antwone 'Bad Fowl' Grey, of Central Village, St Catherine, who pleaded guilty to pouring gasolene on King and setting her ablaze in August 2023.

Grey was sentenced to 12 years’ imprisonment in the St Catherine Circuit Court by Justice Dale Palmer, with two years deducted for time already spent in custody.

“I wish it was more,” King said after the ruling. “What he’s going to go through in that cell for 12 years, I’ve been through even worse in just two years.”

King said she still has additional surgeries to undergo.

The court heard that Grey attacked King at her home in Redwood District while she slept, then fled the scene, remaining at large until his arrest in February 2024. His arrest came a day after King returned to Jamaica following months of intensive treatment overseas.

King, who was 17 at the time of the attack, has since passed six Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate subjects and is pursuing nursing training.

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