STUART SYVRET VS THE NURSING & MIDWIFERY COUNCIL.

Case No. CO/13887/2012

A Brief Extract from the Detailed Argument.

Reproduced below is an edited extract from the Applicant’s detailed argument in the judicial review application Stuart Syvret vs. Nursing & Midwifery Council (Case No. CO/13887/2012).

Jersey government reporting restrictions prevent a fuller presentation here, and at this moment.

Stuart Syvret.

Article 2 – the Right to Life – and the Responsibility of the NMC as a Public Authority.

And -

Twenty Murdering Nurses: A Global Media Survey.

All ‘public authorities’ are bound by the European Convention on Human Rights. The Convention is given domestic expression in the Human Rights Act.

Convention Rights fall into two broad categories – absolute rights and non-absolute rights.

The Right to Life enshrined in Article 2 of the Convention is an absolute right.

Whilst the NMC is bound by the entirety of the HRA, the extant case unavoidably invites a particular focus on Article 2 of the Convention.

Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights says:

Article 2 – Right to life

Everyone's right to life shall be protected by law. No one shall be deprived of his life intentionally save in the execution of a sentence of a court following his conviction of a crime for which this penalty is provided by law.

Deprivation of life shall not be regarded as inflicted in contravention of this article when it results from the use of force which is no more than absolutely necessary”.

Signatory states and public authorities are required not merely to adopt the Convention as a cosmetic device, but, rather, to ensure that the Rights so enshrined are “effective rights”. To that purpose, the Convention, and the resultant body of ECtHR case-law, establishes that authorities have “positive obligations” – that is, they must undertake positive steps to ensure Convention Rights are protected.

Article 2 of the ECHR forms the most “positive obligation” upon a contracting party. That is, the relevant public authorities are required not only to have in place legislation that forbids the taking of life, but are additionally, pro-actively required to take all reasonable steps to see that the lives of individuals are not placed in jeopardy.

In respect of the right to life, the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that states have three main duties:

a duty to refrain from unlawful killing,

a duty to investigate suspicious deaths and,

in certain circumstances, a positive duty to prevent foreseeable loss of life.

The United Kingdom, the relevant state, has recognised in law the need to ensure the protection of the lives of patients, given the extreme vulnerability of such people and the scope in an activity such as nursing for dangerous rogue practitioners to threaten life, and to take life. Thus the regulation and oversight of nursing standards is – expressly – vested in the NMC by law.

The NMC’s statutory functions, powers and responsibilities are laid down in statutory instrument 2002 No. 253 NURSES AND MIDWIVES: The Nursing and Midwifery Order 2001.

The purpose of the Order in establishing and empowering the Nursing & Midwifery Council is described in the explanatory Note accompanying the Order. The first paragraph of that Note says:

“This Order provides for the regulation of nurses and midwives and creates a regulatory body, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, which is required to set standards of education, training, conduct and performance and to put in place arrangements to ensure that they are met (article 3). It provides for the Council to keep a register of qualified nurses and midwives and creates four statutory committees: the Investigating Committee, Conduct and Competence Committee, Health Committee and Midwifery Committee (article 3(9)). The Order replaces the regulatory system provided for by the Nurses, Midwives and Health Visitors Act 1997.”

The Order itself describes and lays out the various powers and methods by which the NMC may undertake and achieve its functions as a public authority.

A lay-audience may consider the odds of a nurse seeking to harm or kill patients to be so remote – to be such a vanishingly rare occurrence – that it is somehow ‘proportionate’ and ‘reasonable’ and ‘measured’ to regard such a risk, or particular allegation, as something to be taken reasonably lightly.

Appended to this submission, and reproduced below is a survey (Twenty Murdering Nurses: A Global Media Survey) taken from global media sources (all readily accessible via the internet) of twenty cases of clinical murder, attempted murder and mass-murder by nurses. Any number of other cases could be added - but the point is established.

The legal relevance of these issues is clear. Although this explanation has never been offered by the NMC (no explanation at all has been) – it seems inevitable that the public authority will claim to have attached what it considered to be an appropriate “weighting” to the human rights of an accused nurse, and has decided to attach far greater “weight” to what it estimates to be the human rights of an accused – than it does to the human rights of vulnerable patients. In the absence of any actually meaningful explanation for the conduct of the NMC, it is not possible to imagine any vaguely rational or credible alternative explanation (at least, that is, non-criminal explanation) for the contested decisions of the public authority.

Obviously – the legal question arising is “did the NMC, in coming to such a judgment in the relevant case, in which it attached such weight to the human rights of a nurse, act lawfully?”

Whilst not exhaustive, some obvious focusing of that question will be, “was that judgment “proportionate”? Did it achieve a “legitimate aim?” Did it serve the deep legal requirements of giving “practical effect” to all of the rights described in the HRA? Did it give “appropriate consideration” to the rights of other people? Did it take into account all “relevant factors” and not take into account “non-relevant factors?” Did it take into account all of the “available evidence”? Was the decision-making body “properly informed”? Did it act with “procedural fairness”?

When assessing whether the actions and decisions of the NMC have been “reasonable” in the extant case, a key question we must ask is: -

“Are there sufficient grounds – and sufficient cases in the public record – to show that murderous nurses exist, and that such is the opportunity, power and practical means available to nurses with such intent to harm patients – that relevant public authorities should exercise pro-active vigilance – especially with regard to the Right to Life?”

If the answer to that question is “yes” – it is then immensely difficult – if not impossible - to see how the actions and decisions of the NMC in the extant case can have been lawful.

Certainly – the matter requires the “anxious scrutiny” of the court.

The following quote is taken from an article for Crime Library, titled, Angels of Death: The Male Nurses:

“In an article for Forensic Nurse, Kelly Pyrek, indicates that since the mid-1970s, there have been 36 cases of serial murder among nurses and other healthcare workers in the U.S. A survey shows that the incidences appear to be increasing, with 14 during the 1990s and already five since 2000. (The article was written before Cullen’s atrocities came to light, so that makes at least six.) ‘Many experts speculate,’ says Pyrek, ‘that healthcare has contributed more serial killers than all other professions combined and that the field attracts a disproportionately high number of people with a pathological interest in life and death.’”

In USAToday, journalist Rick Hampson wrote of the 2003 case of the male nurse and mass-murderer Charles Cullen: -

“But possibly the biggest reason that some nurses kill is that they can.

"They have access to patients who are often very sick, very old or very young — and access to drugs powerful enough to kill unobtrusively through an intravenous tube. And they work at institutions with an inherent aversion to litigation and publicity.

"Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist at DeSales University in Center Valley, Pa., has worked with FBI profilers. "Some hospitals don't want the public to know they had someone like this, so they sort of shove the problem aside" with a dismissal, she said. "But then the nurse gets a job somewhere else."

In the case of the New Jersey mass-murdering male nurse Charles Cullen, seven nurses at St Lukes Hospital who worked with Cullen later met with the Lehigh County district attorney to alert the authorities of their suspicions that Cullen had used drugs to kill patients. They pointed out that, between January 2002 and June 2002, Cullen had worked 20 percent of the hours on his unit but was present for nearly two-thirds of the deaths. But investigators never looked into Cullen's past, and the case was dropped nine months later for lack of evidence. It was later learned that hospital administrators had stymied the investigation by not being totally forthcoming with investigators.

In September 2002, Cullen found a job at Somerset Medical Center in Somerville, New Jersey.

The executive director of the New Jersey Poison Information and Education System warned Somerset Medical Center officials in July 2003 that at least four of the suspicious overdoses indicated the possibility that an employee was killing patients. But the hospital put off contacting authorities until October. By then, Cullen had killed another five patients and attempted to kill a sixth.

State officials penalized the hospital for failing to report a nonfatal insulin overdose in August. The overdose had been administered by Cullen. When Cullen's final victim died of low blood sugar in October, the medical center alerted state authorities. An investigation into Cullen's employment history revealed past suspicions about his involvement with prior deaths. Somerset Medical Center fired Cullen on October 31, 2003, for lying on his job application.

Initially charged with 16 murders, Cullen involvement in dozens of other deaths came to light. Experts have estimated that Charles Cullen may ultimately be responsible for some 400 murders, which would make him the most prolific serial killer in American history.

The obvious conclusions and concerns in respect of nursing and the opportunity the profession provides for murder were expressed by John Field, an Australian Barrister and registered nurse, who studied killer nurses for a PhD. During an interview with Australian radio, Field said: -

“Virtually the only time that these nurses are detected is when there's a pattern of unusual deaths that's discovered. So there are a number of implications of that, but one of them is that oftentimes the killing can go on for a long time so then they have multiple victims over a number of years. They move from place to place, they have no pattern that's picked up.

“I think what we can learn is that nurses themselves need to have a heightened awareness of it. They have to at least at first accept the possibility that this could happen. And what I found was during the whole time I was doing this study, when nurses would ask me what I was doing my PhD on and I'd say, "Nurses that murder their patients". And they'd say, "Oh, you mean euthanasia, you know, putting people out of their misery”.

“And I'd say, "No, I mean people who are murdering their patients, that are actually doing it with malice and forethought, that are intentionally killing them for no good reason and sometimes when they're healthy." And they'd be astonished. They couldn't believe that a nurse would do such a thing. And I think that's part of the problem is that it's so hard to contemplate that that would be the case, it's such a foreign concept that it would be almost impossible to suspect your colleague of doing that.”

Interviewer: “And you found that even in the response of some hospitals in these cases that quite often they simply moved that nurse on if there were some suspicions, which only opened up the possibility of them doing it somewhere else?”

“That's right. Now the practice of permitting people who were suspected or considered to be possibly be killing patients, just moving them on, probably isn't a satisfactory way of dealing with it. And the fact that those people then went on to have long killing careers, sometimes 16 or more years, suggests that’s a very poor practice.”

It is very clearly – and tragically – established in the public record, beyond any credible dispute, that nursing as an activity is attractive to that small number of people who have psychopathic urges to exercise the power of life and death over vulnerable people. The public record also shows that nursing - perhaps uniquely, because of the amount of time and unsupervised access nurses have to vulnerable patients  - presents to psychopaths an unparalleled access to the opportunity – and the means – to kill. And to kill with comparatively slight risk of detection.

Twenty Murdering Nurses: A Global Media Survey:

1: Genene Jones

1985

“Genene Anne Jones (born July 13, 1950) is a former paediatric nurse who killed somewhere between 11 and 46 infants and children in her care. She used injections of digoxin, heparin and later succinylcholine to induce medical crises in her patients, with the intention of reviving them afterward in order to receive praise and attention. These medications are known to cause heart paralysis and other complications when given as an overdose. Many children however, did not survive the initial attack and could not be revived. The exact number of murders remain unknown, as hospital officials allegedly first misplaced then destroyed records of her activities to prevent further litigation after Jones' first conviction.

While working at the Bexar County Hospital (now The University Hospital of San Antonio) in the Paediatric Intensive care unit, it was determined that a statistically inordinate number of children Jones worked with were dying. Rather than pursue further investigation the hospital simply asked Jones to resign, which she did.”

2: Donald Harvey:

1987

“Donald Harvey is a serial killer responsible for killing 36 to 57 people, many of who were patients at hospitals where he was employed. His killing spree lasted from May 1970 until March 1987, only ending after a police investigation into the death of a patient resulted in Harvey's confession. Labelled the "Angel of Death" Harvey said he first began to kill to help ease the pain of dying patients, but a detailed diary he kept paints the picture of a sadistic, cold-hearted killer.

Beginning on August 11, 1987, and throughout several more days, Harvey confessed to killing over 70 people. After investigating each of his claims he was charged with 25 counts of aggravated murder, to which Harvey pled guilty. He was given four consecutive 20-year sentences. Later, in February, 1988, he confessed to committing three more murders in Cincinnati. 

In Kentucky Harvey confessed to 12 murders and was sentenced to eight life terms plus 20 years.”

3: Richard Angelo

1990 

“Working the graveyard shift put Angelo into the perfect position to continue to work on his feeling of inadequacy, so much so that during his relatively short time at the Good Samaritan, there were 37 "Code-Blue" emergencies during his shift. Only 12 of the 37 patients lived to talk about their near death experience.

Angelo, apparently not swayed by his inability to keep his victims alive, continued injecting patients with a combination of the paralyzing drugs, Pavulon and Anectine, sometimes telling the patient that he was giving them something which would make them feel better.

Soon after administering the deadly cocktail, the patients would begin to feel numb and their breathing would become constricted as did their ability to communicate to nurses and doctors. Few could survive the deadly attack.

Then on October 11, 1987 Angelo came under suspicion after one of his victims, Gerolamo Kucich, managed to use the call button for assistance after receiving an injection from Angelo. One of the nurses responding to his call for help took a urine sample and had it analyzed. The test proved positive for containing the drugs, Pavulon and Anectine, neither of which had been prescribed to Kucich.

The following day Angelo's locker and home were searched and police found vials of both drugs and Angelo was arrested. The bodies of several of the suspected victims were exhumed and tested for the deadly drugs. The test proved positive for the drugs on ten of the dead patients.

Angelo was ultimately convicted of two counts of depraved indifference murder (second-degree murder), one count of second degree manslaughter, one count of criminally negligent homicide and six counts of assault with respect to five of the patients and was sentenced to 61 years to life.”

4: Beverley Allitt

1993

“Beverley Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968, Corby Glen, Lincolnshire, England), dubbed by the media the Angel of Death, is an English serial killer who murdered four children and injured nine others while working as a State Enrolled Nurse (SEN), on the children's ward of Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire. Her main method of murder was to inject the child with potassium chloride (to cause cardiac arrest), or with insulin (to induce lethal hypoglycaemia).

She was sentenced to life imprisonment at her trial at Nottingham Crown Court in 1993 and is currently being held at Rampton Secure Hospital.” 

5: Orville Majors 

1999

“A former nurse who gave lethal injections to six hospital patients has been sentenced to 360 years for the "diabolical" murders. 

Orville Lynn Majors, 38, who reportedly told a colleague that old people ''should all be gassed'', had been linked to 130 deaths. 

But he was only tried on the seven cases the prosecution thought most likely to secure a conviction. Majors was found guilty on six of those counts last month. 

"It's the judgement of this court that the maximum sentence is the minimum sentence in this case," said Judge Ernest Yelton. 

Relatives of Majors' victims broke down in tears as he was sentenced to 60 years for each of the six murders. 

Judge Yelton described Major's crime as "a paragon of evil at its most wicked". 

The patients, four women and two men aged 56 to 89, died between 1993 and 1995 at the Vermillion county hospital in Clinton, Indiana. 

Prosecutors said Majors gave his victims fatal overdoses and that some of the injections were witnessed by their loved ones. 

Investigators said he used the potentially heart-stopping drug potassium chloride, vials of which were found in his home and car.” 

6: Edson Izidoro Guimarães

2000

“Edson Isidoro Guimarães (born 1957) is a Brazilian nursing assistant and convicted serial killer. He confessed to five murders of which he was convicted of four, but is suspected of committing up to 131 in total. He claimed that he chose patients whose conditions were irreversible and who were in pain.

Guimarães worked as a nurse in the Salgado Filho Hospital in the Méier district of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He was caught in 1999 when a hospital porter saw Guimarães fill a syringe with potassium chloride and inject a comatose patient who immediately died. The police were informed and a higher than average death rate on his ward increased their suspicions. On his arrest he confessed to five murders.”

7: Kristen Gilbert 

2001

“A former veterans hospital nurse who killed four of her patients with injections of poison should spend the rest of her life in prison, a federal jury decided Monday.

Kristen Gilbert, a 33-year-old mother of two, could have faced death by lethal injection and would have become the only woman on federal death row.

Gilbert was convicted March 14 of the first-degree murder in the deaths of three veterans. She also was convicted of the second-degree murder, which is not subject to the death penalty, in the death of another veteran.

Gilbert also was convicted of trying to kill two other veterans in her care.

From August 1995 through February 1996, Gilbert dealt out wholesale death. Her victims were helpless patients who trusted her as a caregiver, only to learn too late that she was a killer, her weapon a drug capable of causing fatal heart attacks. But she got away with murder until three of her fellow nurses could no longer ignore the proliferation of deadly "coincidences" on Gilbert's watch. Investigators believe Kristen Gilbert may have been responsible for as many as 40 deaths.”

8: Alison Firth

2001

“A nurse who drugged and killed a frail elderly woman has been found guilty of murder by a jury at Newcastle Crown Court. 

Alison Firth, 36, poisoned 84-year-old Alice Grant with an overdose of the sedative drug heminevrin in May last year. 

The court was told Firth may have killed Mrs Grant because she was lazy and could not face having to provide regular care for her in the future. 

Outside court, Detective Superintendent Chris Symonds, who led the inquiry, said the nurse acted in an evil manner and was a disgrace to her profession. 

He said: "The verdict demonstrates that elderly people have the protection of the law, notwithstanding the fact that they are extremely ill and in the last stages of their natural life. 

"In this case Alice Grant, as was articulated by witnesses, although very ill, was described as alert and able to express feelings through her eyes and touch to those who were caring for her. 

"She did not deserve to be killed in this way. 

"Firth deliberately set out, planned and executed the death of Alice Grant and the jury have seen Alison Firth for what she is.”

9: Timea Faludi

2002. 

“In early 2001 the Hungarian nurse Timea Faludi (then 24) confessed on killing approximately 40 elderly patients "for mercy". The case was uncovered when the medical director of the Gyala Nviro Hospital in Budapest noticed, that the death toll was unusually high, when sister Timea was on night-shift. Controls of the drug usage showed a shortage of tranquilizer. Faludi withdrew her confessions during trial and as all the victims had been cremated there was no evidence left.

Faludi was convicted to 9 years in prison for repeated attempts of murder and a lifelong prohibition to work as nurse.”

10: Christine Malèvre

2003

“French Nurse Jailed in 6 Deaths 

A French nurse who said she helped the terminally ill die out of compassion was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for the deaths of six hospital patients. 

The nurse, Christine Malèvre, had been charged with the murder of seven patients at a lung hospital in Mantes-la-Jolie near Paris in 1997 and 1998. She faced life in prison.

Ms. Malèvre's case sparked energetic debate on euthanasia in France, a predominantly Roman Catholic country, after she initially said she had “helped” about 30 terminally ill patients end their lives.”

11: Lucy de Berk

2003 

“A nurse thought to be one of the most prolific serial killers in the Netherlands has been jailed for life after a court found her guilty of the murder of four of her patients and the attempted murder of three others.

Lucy Isabella Quirina de Berk, 41, has repeatedly protested her innocence but on Monday a court in the Hague concluded that she had killed three babies and one elderly woman by lethal injection.

It also found her guilty of trying to murder two other babies and another pensioner.

The case has captured the public imagination because of the large number of people who died under suspicious circumstances in de Berk's care. She was initially accused of killing 13 and of attempting to murder five others.

The murders happened between 1997 and 2001 at three hospitals in the Hague. In each case the patient died of an overdose of either potassium chloride or morphine and de Berk was the last person to be at the bedside. During her trial, statisticians gave evidence that the chances of her being present coincidentally at each death were one in 342 million.” 

12: Anne Grigg-Booth 

2004

“Detectives charged Grigg-Booth in September 2004. 

The nurse was charged with murdering June Driver, 67, in July 2000; Eva Blackburn, 75, in November 2001; and 96-year-old Annie Midgley in July 2002.

She was also accused of trying to kill 42-year-old Michael Parker in June 2002.

As well as the murder and attempted murder charges, Grigg-Booth faced 13 counts of unlawfully administering poison to 12 other patients.

She was due to go on trial in April 2006, but died of an overdose aged 52 on 29 August 2005.

The night nurse practitioner was charged with the murder of three elderly patients after illegally prescribing and injecting powerful painkilling drugs as if she was a qualified doctor. 

But police believe she may have killed many more during her 25 years working at Airedale General Hospital in Keighley, West Yorkshire. 

Grigg-Booth also faced an attempted murder charge and 13 counts of unlawfully administering poison to 12 other patients but was never brought to trial because she died from a drink and drugs overdose at her home in 2005 at the age of 52.”

13: Charles Cullen  

2004

“Charles Edmund Cullen (born February 22, 1960) is a former nurse who is the most prolific serial killer in New Jersey history, and suspected to be the most prolific serial killer in American history. Cullen told authorities in December 2003 that he could specifically recall the murder of perhaps 40 patients during the 16 years he worked at 10 hospitals in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. But in subsequent interviews with police, psychiatric professionals, and the only journalist with whom he had ever granted interviews, Charles Graeber, it soon became clear that he had killed many more, whom he could not specifically remember. Experts have estimated that Charles Cullen may ultimately be responsible for some 400 murders- making him the most prolific serial killer in American history.”

14: Abraão José Bueno

2005

“Abraão José Bueno (born 1977) is a Brazilian nurse and serial killer. In 2005 he was sentenced to 110 years imprisonment for the murder of four children and the attempted murder of another four.

Bueno worked as a nurse in the Instituto de Puericultura Martagão Gesteira of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. 

In 2005 Bueno, working in a children's ward, began injecting babies and older children with overdoses of sedatives, causing them to stop breathing. He would then call medical staff to resuscitate them. In the course of one month up to fifteen children are thought to have been targeted, all between the ages of one and ten. Many suffered from AIDS and leukaemia. 

Bueno was arrested in November 2005. On 15 May 2008 he was found guilty by judge Valéria Caldi on four counts of murder and four counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to 110 years in total.”

15: Vicki Dawn Jackson

2006

“A former hospital nurse pleaded no contest Tuesday to killing 10 patients nearly six years ago by injecting them with a drug used to temporarily halt breathing. 

Vickie Dawn Jackson, 40, will be sentenced to life in prison, the maximum sentence she faced if she had been convicted by a jury.

Authorities have not offered a motive for the slayings.

Jackson was accused of killing the patients, including her third husband's grandfather, by injecting them with a drug used to stop breathing to allow insertion of a breathing tube.

Prosecutor said the deaths occurred during her night shifts at Nocona General Hospital in 2000 and 2001. More than 20 vials of the drug were missing and a syringe with traces of the drug was found in the nurse's garbage, they said.”

16: Stephan Letter

2006

“A German nurse has been convicted and sentenced to life in prison for killing 28 patients at a hospital he worked at in the southern part of the country. Stephan Letter was found guilty of 12 counts of murder, 15 counts of manslaughter and one count of illegal mercy killing.

Letter, who was nicknamed the "Angel of Death" in the German media had admitted to giving lethal injections to 16 elderly patients at a local hospital and was thought to have killed 12 more.

He eventually said he could not remember how many he had killed.

During the trial, Herbert Pollert, the lead prosecutor, said autopsies had been performed on 42 former patients at a hospital in the Bavarian town of Sonthofen. 

The victims all died during the 17 months Letter worked at the clinic and most of the patients were above the age of 75, though one was as young as 40.

The deaths didn’t raise any red flags at the medical facility because of the patients’ age, but concerns appeared when officials found medications had disappeared.

Letter was finally arrested after authorities found some of the drugs at his home — an amount large enough to have killed 10 more patients. The nurse used a mixture of a sedative and muscle relaxant to kill the patients, and the drug cocktail would have taken only five minutes to induce death.

"We have the strongest suspicions that all 42 of the disinterred were killed by the accused," a police spokesman said. However, Police are unable to check the causes of death of 38 other patients who were at the hospital during the same period, because their bodies were cremated.”

17: Irene Becker

2007 

German Nurse Sentenced to Life for Killing Patients.

A nurse has been sentenced to life imprisonment for killing six patients in her care at the Charite Hospital in Berlin with an overdose of medication.

The German nurse went on trial in April for the murder of six people and the attempted murder of two others between June 2005 and October 2006.

Berlin's Charite hospital, Europe's biggest university hospital, came in for manifold criticism throughout the trial for failing to raise the alarm earlier.

Becker, who worked in cardiology, was arrested in October 2006 after a fellow nurse alerted a doctor about the disturbingly high number of patients dying in their ward.

Most of the nurse's victims had been elderly and close to death.

18: Colin Norris:

2008.

“A senior nurse who murdered four elderly women patients began a minimum 30-year jail term yesterday without showing remorse or explaining what led him to take his victims' lives.

Passing sentence on 32-year-old Colin Norris, Mr Justice Griffith Williams said months of evidence had left him no wiser about the motives behind a "thoroughly evil" betrayal of trust.

He had carried out the murders with increasing confidence over a six-month period in 2002 at two Leeds hospitals. 

The court and police praised Dr Emma Ward, who questioned an insulin dose given to one victim, 86-year-old Ethel Hall, and triggered the police investigation. But Hall's son Stuart, 53, said yesterday that the family and other victims' relatives were seeking talks with Leeds Teaching Hospitals Trust about an independent inquiry into the case.

"We hope Colin Norris never leaves prison and is never in a situation where he can harm anyone else again," he said. "I do not understand why he pretended to be a caring nurse when he was really a cold-blooded killer who preyed on the vulnerable."

Norris was convicted on an 11-1 jury vote of murdering Hall, Doris Ludlam, 80, Bridget Bourke, 88, and Irene Crookes, 79, and attempting to murder Vera Wilby, 90, who survived a prolonged coma after an unnecessary insulin injection. 

Det Chief Supt Chris Gregg, of West Yorkshire police, said he shared the judge's frustration at not knowing what led Norris to kill. He said after the sentencing: "Only he knows the answer to that, but I am convinced he would have gone on to kill more patients had he not been stopped in his tracks."”

19: Katariina Pantila

2009

“A Finnish nurse dubbed "the angel of death" for murdering a mentally disabled patient and attempting to murder a healthy eight-month old baby with insulin was found dead in her jail cell, police said Tuesday.

"She has perished there," an officer with the police in Turku, on the west coast of Finland, told AFP, confirming that Katariina Pantila, 28, died after resuscitation efforts in her cell at a Turku jail Monday.

Last week, an appeals court upheld a life sentence for Pantila, formerly known as Katariina Loennqvist, for the murder of a 79-year-old, bed-ridden woman by injecting her with insulin at a rehabilitation centre in 2007.”

20: Aino Nykopp-Koski:

2010

“A Finnish nurse was sentenced to life in prison on Wednesday for murdering five of her elderly patients with lethal drug overdoses, and for trying to kill five others. 

The Helsinki District Court found Aino Nykopp-Koski guilty of five murders, five attempted murders, three aggravated assaults, three thefts and possessing illegal drugs.

The murders happened in hospitals, hospices and private homes between 2004 and 2009.”

[The above document is an edited extract from the Detailed Argument of the Applicant in Stuart Syvret vs. Nursing & Midwifery Council: Case No.  CO/13887/2012.]