CRIMINAL CASE NO. 276 OF 2010
COURT: You are guilty of a truly wicked crime. In cold blood and with calculation, you poured sulphuric acid onto your former wife while she slept, defenceless and unsuspecting.
I have no doubt that you knew what the consequences would be, and that your intention was to cause her ruin. You achieved your object. The injuries she suffered were horrific. 14 per cent of her body surface was burnt. You poured the acid on her head, involving her scalp, face, eyes and neck. The acid reached her arms and left leg. The pain must have been excruciating.
The photographs of the damage you caused her are heartbreaking. The effect on her life can be described as shattering. You took the sight of her left eye, and damaged the sight of her right. Her face is deformed, causing complaint that she cannot eat or breathe properly. She faces continuing surgery, and suffers continuing pain, both physical and psychological, although her considerable fortitude in such extreme adversity has meant that active psychotherapy has not been necessary.
The injuries you inflicted caused her to lose her job. She has suffered financial difficulty, and I am told she has become bankrupt. Your daughter has had to quit her studies to support her.
Before you poured the acid on her, you said to her, “You go to die.” You are not charged with attempted murder, and I will not take the words to indicate that it was your intention to take her life. I do construe them, however, as evidence of your intention to spoil and destroy the quality of the rest of her life.
You are 71. She is 45. You were married for 20 years. She divorced you, obtaining custody of your daughter and the tenancy of the matrimonial home, yet you did not move out. She married again to a man on the mainland. There were arguments over your refusal to move and over her new life, independent of you. You told the police that it was this state of affairs that lay behind your attack upon her.
You knew you would be caught and punished. You have pleaded guilty. There was no room for a defence. There is every appearance that you traded the freedom of your shorter remaining years to wreck her longer ones. You must now pay a high price for that trade.
There is and was nothing wrong with you mentally. A psychiatrist described you as having good contact with reality. At the end of your interview with the police, they asked if you wanted to add anything. You did not say you were sorry. That probably prompted the interviewer to ask, as he did, how you then felt. Your answer was the word “Nothing”.
I am bound to reduce your sentence by a third for your plea of guilty. That reflects convention and convenience, and is no indication that I sense remorse.
I have to consider your age as a matter of mitigation. It has been said that advanced age can be taken into account as an act of mercy. This is not a case where I am minded to show you any.
It is also the fact that courts may, in some cases, wish to avoid the prospect of a convicted man ending his days whilst still in prison. That consideration does not move me to reduce your sentence. I see no justice in you walking free the sooner thereby, while she still hides behind the mask your conduct forces her to wear when facing the world. Age has not blunted the malice you displayed.
I do not forget your lack of previous convictions and what is said in the letters I have read sent to me on your behalf. Such matters do not persuade me to leniency.
Your case is at the top end of the bracket for such crime. The top end of the bracket attracts a sentence of 18 years’ imprisonment.
You will go to prison for 12 years.