Kenya’s High Court sentenced Paul Mackenzie to 200 years in prison on Friday, November 6, for the murders of 190 children and one adult in Shakahola Forest. Justice Diana Kavedza, sitting in Mombasa, imposed two consecutive 100-year terms, distinguishing deaths caused by enforced starvation from killings by direct physical violence. The Associated Press reported that the court sentenced Mackenzie’s assistant pastor, Smart Mwakalama, to 160 years.

The hearing followed the October 19 convictions of Mackenzie and 28 others on 191 murder counts. The court found that Mackenzie, who led the Good News International Church, directed followers to fast to death and that people acting on those orders enforced the fast. Mackenzie denied forcing victims to starve. The court rejected that defense.

The sentence addresses the deaths charged in this trial. Hundreds of bodies were recovered in Shakahola, and Mackenzie faces separate proceedings. Defense lawyer Lawrence Obonyo told Reuters he would appeal the ruling. His statement describes his intention; it does not establish that an appeal has already been filed.

How the court calculated the sentence

Kenya’s Daily Nation reported that 183 counts covered deaths by starvation, including those of 182 children and the adult. The eight other counts involved children killed through direct violence. The judge ordered the terms within each group to run together and the two groups to run one after the other. That is how 191 convictions produced a total term of 200 years.

The prosecution sought the death penalty for Mackenzie and life imprisonment for his accomplices, according to AP. The court instead imposed different prison terms. Reuters reported that the other 28 defendants received sentences of 10 to 160 years. The judge placed the main responsibility on Mackenzie for relocating followers to a remote site and ordering the fast. The defendants included guards who enforced his directives and gravediggers who helped conceal the deaths.

How prosecutors established coercion

In its account of the October judgment, the Kenya News Agency reported that the court heard 120 prosecution witnesses and nine defense witnesses. It found that children were made to fast first and that some who resisted were beaten, restrained or confined. The judge rejected the argument that followers’ decision to move to Shakahola made the fasting voluntary and held that children could not meaningfully consent to a fast intended to end in death.

The evidence did not establish the cause of death by autopsy in every case. According to the agency’s account, postmortem examinations identified starvation in 72 cases, while decomposition prevented a determination in more than 100. The court considered witness testimony, the condition of graves and the pattern of deaths when physical evidence alone could not establish a cause. That explains why the number of starvation deaths addressed at sentencing was larger than the number in which autopsies directly identified starvation.

The case covers only part of the Shakahola toll

Police began recovering bodies in April 2023 near Malindi, on Kenya’s coast. The Kenya National Commission on Human Rights documented 448 bodies recovered in Shakahola in its report covering July 2023 through November 2024. AP reported that more than 60 bodies had been identified and reburied by relatives, while many remained unidentified and unclaimed. The commission called for full implementation of Kenya’s 2017 law establishing a national coroners service, which it said would have enabled effective independent investigations.

Reuters reported that Mackenzie also faces a case over 52 deaths at another site; he has pleaded not guilty in that case. Those allegations are separate from the 191 convictions underlying Friday’s sentence. The recovery figures measure the scale of the investigation; the number of counts measures the narrower set of deaths that the court considered in this trial.

Stephen Mwiti, who told Reuters that he lost six children at Shakahola, said their mother had taken them there. He questioned what choice the children had, whatever adults may have believed about fasting. Dan Mackenzie, one of the preacher’s sons, told the news agency he had left the church and lost a younger brother and friends at Shakahola.

Questions over earlier warnings

At sentencing, Kavedza said public institutions had failed to prevent the killings and called on Parliament to act, Reuters reported. A 2024 monitoring report from Kenya’s human rights commission found that authorities had arrested Mackenzie or other officials of his ministry on three occasions between 2017 and the discovery of the deaths in 2023. The allegations in those encounters included failures to provide children with education and operating an unauthorized educational institution. Those earlier cases were distinct from the murders, but they are part of the record of when authorities first encountered the group.

A Senate bill published in 2024 proposes a registrar for religious organizations, registration requirements and powers to request information or suspend a registration. Its explanatory memorandum also cites Kenya’s constitutional protections for freedom of worship and belief. Reuters reported that reform proposals have yet to become law. Friday’s sentence establishes punishment in the murder case; the question of how the state should respond to warnings about coercion or abuse remains before policymakers.