Reuters
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A South Korean-born New Zealand woman was sentenced to life in jail on Wednesday for murdering her two younger children, whose our bodies have been found in suitcases in an deserted storage locker greater than three years in the past, New Zealand media reported.
Hakyung Lee was convicted in September after admitting to killing the children, aged eight and 6 in 2018, the yr after the children’s father had died of most cancers.
Lee pleaded not responsible by cause of madness and represented herself in the course of the trial, supported by two attorneys.
Lee’s attorneys on Wednesday argued {that a} life sentence could be unjust given her psychological well being points, however prosecutors mentioned there was no proof Lee was suicidal on the time of the killings, the New Zealand Herald newspaper reported.
Judge Geoffrey Venning rejected calls for a lesser penalty, although he authorized obligatory remedy at a safe psychiatric facility, with the situation that Lee will return to jail as soon as deemed mentally match, the report mentioned.
“You knew your actions were morally wrong … perhaps you could not bear to have your children around you as a constant reminder of your previous happy life,” Venning mentioned.
Lee should serve a minimal non-parole interval of 17 years.
Life imprisonment is the harshest punishment obtainable in New Zealand, which abolished the dying penalty in 1989.
The courtroom, in the course of the trial, had heard that Lee gave the children an overdose of prescription drugs in 2018, earlier than wrapping their our bodies in plastic luggage and placing them within the suitcases.
The children’s stays have been discovered in 2022 by a household sorting by way of the contents of a storage locker that they had purchased at a web-based public sale.
New Zealand police launched a homicide investigation and Lee, who had moved to South Korea in 2018, was extradited to face trial in November 2022.