Frenchwoman kills 8 newborns, gets 9yrs'

Paris - A Frenchwoman was on Thursday convicted of murdering eight of her newborns over an 11-year period and sentenced to nine years in prison.

Dominique Cottrez, a 51-year-old mother of two daughters, has stood trial for six days at court in the city of Douai in northern France.

The prosecutor, while acknowledging her fragile mental state, had called for Cottrez to be sentenced to 18 years. Her lawyers welcomed the shorter sentence, saying it reflected "hope for Cottrez".

"This woman was never a criminal," her lawyer Frank Berton said after the ruling. "This woman was walled in her silence, walled in her isolation, walled in her obesity."

The murders came to light in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, about 150km north of Paris, in July 2010 after the owners of a new home discovered two bags with the corpses in the Cottrez family house.