Woman who killed 8 babies gets 15-year term

updated 2:54 p.m. ET April 7, 2008

FRANKFURT AN DER ODER, Germany - A German woman convicted of killing eight of her babies must serve the maximum 15 years in prison, a court ruled Monday.

Sabine Hilschenz, 42, was convicted in 2006 of killing eight of her newborn babies and burying them in flower pots and a fish tank in the garden of her parents' home near the German-Polish border.

The eight children were born between 1992 and 1998. Hilschenz also was suspected in the death of a ninth child in 1988, but the statute of limitations did not allow for that case to be tried.

After her original conviction on manslaughter charges in a state court in Frankfurt an der Oder, on the Polish border, she was given the maximum 15-year prison sentence.

But the Federal Court of Justice ruled last year that the lower court had not sufficiently considered the possibility of diminished capacity in making its recommendation, and sent the case back for reconsideration.

In its ruling Monday, the court in Frankfurt an der Oder said it found no grounds for the claim of diminished responsibility.

Hilschenz declined to testify at her original trial but said at a hearing this year that she had a serious problem with alcohol in the years when the children were born and could not remember how they died.

Her defense attorney had asked for a revised sentence of less than 10 years in prison.

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