A woman in New Zealand who was convicted of murdering her two children and leaving their bodies in suitcases for years before they were discovered will spend at least 17 years in prison, a judge ruled Wednesday.

Justice Geoffrey Venning told Hakyung Lee at the High Court hearing in the city of Auckland that she would begin her sentence as a patient in a locked psychiatric facility, under New Zealand's compulsory mental health treatment law. Lee must return to prison when she is well enough, the judge said.

"You could not cope when [your husband] became seriously unwell, and perhaps you could not bear to have the children around you as a constant reminder of your former happy life, which had been cruelly taken from you," the judge said, according to BBC News .

A jury in Se

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