KINGSTON, Jamaica — Lieutenant Kyodia Burnett, the former Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) physiotherapist who stabbed his attorney-at-law wife Nordraka to death in December 2018, has been sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Burnett, who had been charged for murder, pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the basis of diminished responsibility when his trial began in February.

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A slew of medical psychiatry reports entered into evidence during the trial indicated that Burnett was first diagnosed with a mental illness in 2008, the same year he married his wife, and that he continued to decline.

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Jacqueline Samuels-Brown, King’s Counsel, attorney for the 41-year-old in addressing trial judge Justice Dale Palmer in the Home Circuit Division of the Supreme Court in Downtown Kingston had said her client was first diagnosed with ‘generalised anxiety depression’ in 2008. She said his condition deteriorated, leading to him being diagnosed with major depressive disorder with anxious distress in January 2018.

Burnett murdered his wife on December 13, 2018.

Samuels-Brown also pointed to an expert opinion contained in one of the reports which said Burnett experienced a further decline leading to him being diagnosed with ‘schizoaffective disorder – the depressive type’ and was at one point placed on suicide watch.

The experienced attorney, who had argued “that all the evidence points in the direction of a supervisory order” had suggested a sentence of no more than three years.

In a detailed plea in mitigation address, Samuels-Brown said an order that does not include incarceration in a prison or correctional centre is the appropriate one to be made in the case.

However,  senior prosecutor Claudette Thompson, now acting director of public prosecutions who led the evidence in the matter, in making her sentencing submission pointed out that while Burnett “is an educated man, a university graduate, a professional who knew from as early as 2008 that he was suffering from a mental illness…his children are now having to face all the good and the bad, negatives and positives, without a mother to guide them”.

“He needs to be punished so that he will understand the consequences of action and inaction…it is a custodial sentence that the Crown is urging on this court,” she said at the time.