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A Connecticut patent lawyer who fatally stabbed his neighbor in the belief that the man had molested his 2-year-old daughter was sentenced to 12 years in prison for a killing that police say rested on an unfounded accusation.

Jonathon Edington pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the death of Barry James, 58, who was killed at his family's home in Fairfield on Aug. 28, 2006. James lived on Colony Street with his elderly parents. Edington, 29 at the time, lived nearby.

Police said Edington cut through a window screen, climbed into James' bedroom and stabbed him 11 times. Barry James' father, Charles James, called 911 after finding his son. "A man just stabbed my son," he told a dispatcher, according to accounts of the call. James was found lying in a pool of blood.

Edington had acted shortly after his wife, Christina, told him she believed James had sexually abused their toddler, prosecutors said. Fairfield police investigated the accusation and found no evidence to support it. Investigators tested the child's bedding and clothing and checked the girl's window for James' fingerprints, turning up nothing, according to news reports. James, a diabetic with nerve damage in both legs, needed help to climb stairs.

Officers found Edington washing blood from his hands at his kitchen sink, police said. Edington had also placed his own call to 911, calmly reporting that a man had been stabbed but declining to give any details.

At Edington's sentencing in Bridgeport on Aug. 31, 2007, a defense psychiatrist testified that Christina Edington had been suffering from postpartum depression when she made the accusation. Superior Court Judge Richard F. Comerford Jr. called the case "a Shakespearean tragedy brought into the real world." He imposed a 20-year term, suspended after 12 years, followed by five years of probation.

The James family rejected the molestation claim and filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Christina Edington, contending that she had set the killing in motion.