Dutch jail nurse on suspicion only

Patients die on nurses all the time. Want to bet that the Dutch have a shortage of nurses after this?

A DUTCH nurse jailed for life for killing seven patients and attempting to murder three others was acquitted yesterday as prosecutors apologised for keeping her behind bars for over six years.

"In all 10 cases, the court found there was no evidence that a crime had been committed," spokeswoman Mia Roessingh for the appeals court in Arnhem, in the eastern Netherlands, said.

Lucia de Berk, 48, was arrested after the death of a baby in her care at a hospital in the Hague in 2001, court documents said. Further investigations at the time suggested that as many as seven children in her care died from "medically unexplained" causes in 2000 and 2001.

She was found guilty in March 2003 of four murders and three attempted murders and sentenced to life imprisonment. An appeals court the following year added three more murders to the conviction list, including that of an elderly woman, and upheld the life sentence.

It found at the time there was evidence that she poisoned two of her victims and said that while there was no evidence of wrongdoing in the other cases, the deaths could only be explained by a criminal act on her part.

After further expert evidence came to light suggesting that all the deaths could in fact be explained by natural causes, the Supreme Court in 2008 referred the case back to the appeals court for review and ordered de Berk to be freed, pending the outcome.

De Berk always maintained her innocence. "This judgment means that Lucia de Berk has spent 6.5 years in jail as an innocent person," the prosecution service said in a statement, adding that a senior official apologized to the nurse in her lawyers' presence.

"It is important that Lucia de Berk is financially compensated as soon as possible," it said.

Original report here



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