German nurse jailed for murdering patients

A Germany nurse has been jailed for life for murdering five patients at a top Berlin hospital with overdoses of medication.

54 year-old Irene Becker received her sentence at the Berlin state court today.

The murder charges resulted from an investigation of the deaths of 15 patients who had died after being under Becker's care.

Prosecutors brought charges over a total of eight seriously ill patients, aged 48 to 77, who died between June 2005 and October 2006 in the cardiology ward of Berlin's Charite hospital.

Becker was acquitted over three of the deaths.

When she went on trial in April, she admitted to four killings, and her lawyer argued that they were the lesser crime of manslaughter.

She said she had pitied the patients and wanted to shorten their suffering.

The court rejected that argument.

The presiding judge, Peter Faust, criticised a lack of supervision and communication at the hospital.

The trial in Berlin followed the conviction last November of another German nurse for killing 28 patients at a hospital in southern Germany with a lethal cocktail of drugs.
source:www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk