KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaican-Canadian Alphanso Warren was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Home Circuit Court on Thursday for the murder of his wife nearly seven years ago.

Warren must serve 25 years before he is eligible for parole. The court, however, deducted from the sentence, the seven years Warren spent in custody before his sentencing.

Prosecutors had requested that Warren spend more than 25 years before being eligible for parole.

Warren was last month found guilty of the stabbing murder of wife Stephanie at the couple’s home in Kingston on December 31, 2015. Stephanie was attacked during a domestic dispute.

Trial judge Justice Leighton Pusey stated that Warren’s previous four convictions were taken into consideration in the sentencing, which included the death of a child of the couple.

He said Warren’s intent at the time of the murder was also considered, as it seemed to have been a crime of passion.

Pusey, however, said that the gravity of the offence was a major factor in the sentencing and the message for the general populace that the time given must serve as a deterrent.

Warren was found guilty of child abandonment of the couple’s eight-month-old daughter Angelica Leslie in Canada. The child was found on the stairwell of a parking garage in January 2008. Stephanie was also found guilty of the offence.

They fled to Jamaica after Warren served 11 months in a two-year sentence before being released and then on April 29, 2011, Warren was found guilty of malicious destruction of property and sentenced to $40,000 or three months imprisonment.

On September 6, 2012, he was sentenced to 12 months at hard labour for concealment of death and failure to bury a dead body after one of his children was found dead in a suitcase.