Lucia de Berk

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lucia de Berk

Lucia de Berk , also Lucy de Berk or Lucia de B. (born September 22, 1961 in The Hague ) is a Dutch pediatric nurse . She was the victim of a miscarriage of justice on unjustified charges of multiple murders and was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2003 by a court in The Hague in the first instance for four poisonings and three attempted murders of patients.

On appeal, she was sentenced to life imprisonment for seven completed and three attempted murders in 2004 and - in the event of a pardon - subsequent placement in a therapeutic facility. In two cases, the convictions were based on incorrect toxicological reports. In the remaining cases, erroneous statistical calculations were made on the likelihood of accidental presence in all deaths. Eventually, the courts followed the assumption that if de Berk had committed two murders, she must also be the killer of all other unexplained deaths in her vicinity. In 2006, the sentence was redefined at life imprisonment, as the High Council of the Netherlands considered the combination of life imprisonment and subsequent execution of measures to be illegal.

De Berk's fate prompted a number of private individuals and scientists to review the allegations. They got the Closed Criminal Case Review Commission and the Prosecutor General to review the case. The High Council of the Netherlands in The Hague decided in autumn 2008 to reopen the case. From 2009 the de Berk case was tried again before the Gerechtshof, Arnhem-Leeuwarden . De Berk was acquitted on April 13, 2010 and had been innocent in prison for more than six years. The alleged murders of which she was originally charged were natural deaths.

Unexplained death and investigation by the clinic

Juliana Children's Hospital in The Hague , alleged crime scene

In the early morning of September 4, 2001, the six-month infant Amber died in the Juliana Children's Hospital in Hague (JKZ) . The child had suffered from a variety of malformations of the lungs, heart, brain and digestive system, and had collapsed that night in the presence of Lucia de Berk and another nurse. Resuscitation measures were unsuccessful, and immediately after the death, one of the doctors involved certified natural death. The following day, a colleague of de Berks appeared at her manager's office and shared her suspicion that deaths or resuscitation were unusual during de Berk's service hours. It was suspected that Amber's death might be an unnatural death. The clinic changed the cause of death to unknown .

On September 5, an investigation into the death was opened and initial interviews with hospital staff were carried out. Lucia de Berk was banned from the house. In an immediately following labor law procedure, fourteen nurses and doctors from the JKZ Lucia de Berk certified that she was a good and pleasant colleague. In an internal assessment from August 2001, it was described as knowledgeable and reliable and rated as good. The labor court imposed on the JKZ an obligation to pay 100,000 guilders in the event of de Berks innocence .

A press conference was held on September 11, 2001 and was broadcast by a regional radio station. The head of the hospital announced that a nurse was involved in several suspicious deaths and resuscitation at the JKZ. He assured the relatives of the deceased and the hospital staff of his condolences. On September 17, the hospital filed a complaint with the police. During the review of the JKZ documents, nine deaths or resuscitations were found for the period from September 2000 to September 2001, which were regarded as surprising and medically inexplicable and in which Lucia de Berk was on duty. Inquiries were also made in two other hospitals in the Hague districts of Leyenburg and Vogelwijk and in a prison hospital in Scheveningen , where Lucia de Berk had worked since 1997. Initially, thirty deaths and special incidents were investigated, the majority of which were resolved within a very short time. Natural deaths had already been established for these suspected deaths and no forensic investigation had been carried out for the other incidents.

Police investigation

Koepelgevangenis in Breda , de Berk's place of pre- trial detention

Lucia de Berk, on the advice of her lawyer, refused to comment on the matter during her police interrogations .

The JKZ calculated that there was a 1 in 7 billion chance that Lucia de Berk was only randomly present at the suspicious deaths and resuscitations. On the basis of this information, the police initiated an investigation.

The de Berks family later stated that they had felt harassed by the police appearance. In particular, de Berk's mother and sister said the police had exploited the family's disagreement to sneak derogatory comments about de Berk.

In the early 1970s, when the de Berk family were still living in Canada, the family home had burned down. The fire investigators of the Canadian police established a short circuit as the cause of the fire, and Lucia was not at home at the time of the fire. In the course of the murder investigation in 2001, de Berk was viewed by the Dutch public prosecutor as a potential arsonist. Dutch investigators traveled to Canada to review de Berk's past. The American criminal psychologist and case analyst Alan Brantley , most recently employed in the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation , saw the fire as fitting into the profile of a serial killer de Berk.

During a house search , the police found diaries and other texts written by de Berk. A story written by de Berk was about the murder of a prostitute. This fictional text was referred to as the "murder text" during the further investigation and was used in the proceedings as an alleged excerpt from the diary against de Berk. According to research by the Canadian police, de Berk was described by her brother as a "bookworm". The two of you would have loved to read Stephen King's books and tried to write in the same style together. De Berk's daughter commented on the contents of the diaries in the same way; the police paid no further attention to this information.

On December 13, 2001, Lucia de Berk was arrested on her grandfather's deathbed. She had previously spoken about her grandfather's medication in a phone conversation tapped by the police and also expressed the wish that she could end her grandfather's suffering. The investigators interpreted this as an indication of an imminent murder. After her arrest, De Berk was initially detained in Koepelgevangenis , a pre- trial detention center for women in Breda .

Criminal proceedings

First instance: for life

On March 24, 2003, Lucia de Berk was sentenced by the Rechtbank Den Haag in the first instance to life imprisonment for four murders , three attempted murders, several thefts to the detriment of the murder victims, forgery of documents (in connection with the falsified documentation of medications) and false statements , she was charged with thirteen murders and five attempted murders in four hospitals. The court based its judgment largely on a probabilistic calculation, according to which there was only a 1 in 342 million probability that de Berk happened to be present at such a large number of deaths or resuscitation. De Berk was convicted only in those cases where further evidence appeared to prove her perpetrator or no medical reason for the death could be found. The court expressly imposed life imprisonment, which in the Netherlands, unlike in Germany, excludes “early release” because only this sentence is appropriate to de Berk's guilt. The imposition of a temporary prison sentence of 20 years would have meant that de Berk could have been released after less than 14 years.

Calling: life sentence and tbs

The Gerechtshof, The Hague, sentenced Lucia de Berk to life imprisonment on June 18, 2004 for seven murders and three attempted murders and several other crimes in three hospitals. In addition, the Terbeschikkingstelling (tbs) was imposed. This forms part of the Dutch penal measure is focused on mentally ill offenders and the forensic unit in Germany or the enforcement of measures in Austria comparable. The combination of life imprisonment and tbs, including coercive therapeutic measures aimed at return to society, was unusual. However, with a view to a possible pardon, the Gerechtshof considered the tbs to be necessary.

Only in two of the cases did the Gerechtshof consider it proven that de Berk had poisoned their victims. However, with a view to the two allegedly proven murders, the court found that the other deaths could only be explained by a crime committed by de Berk. It was ignored that a natural death had already been established in some of these deaths. The opinion of a forensic doctor, which had been requested by the defense, was decisive for the guilty verdict. The reviewer found that the first victim had been given a non-therapeutic dose of the active ingredient digoxin . The Gerechtshof took this allegedly proven murder as the basis for the guilty verdict in the other cases as well.

In addition to the forensic medical report, the court based its judgment on the use of the word “compulsie” (compulsive) in de Berk's diaries. In an entry on the day of the death of one of the deceased patients, she wrote without reference to the death that she had "given in to coercion". Elsewhere she wrote without further details of her "great secret", which she clarified in court with her preoccupation with the Tarot . According to her statements, she was hiding her belief in the tarot cards from those around her because they would not have accepted it. The court saw the records as evidence that de Berk believed he was under an external coercion to kill. The statistical calculations relevant in the first instance for the guilty verdict no longer played a role in the appeal proceedings.

Appeal in cassation and first remittal

Lucia de Berk appealed in cassation to the High Council of the Netherlands against the judgment of the Gerechtshof, The Hague . In its resolution of March 14, 2006, the High Council criticized the imposition of a life sentence and the simultaneous imposition of the Terbeschikkingstelling . The tbs is a measure of reintegration into society, while the life imprisonment precludes return to society. The Gerechtshof's anticipation of a possible pardon for the convicted was unlawful. The judgment was confirmed in all other points complained about, including the evidence. The case was referred to the Amsterdam Gerechtshof, which only had to re-establish the sentence. A few days after the decision, de Berk suffered a heart attack and was transferred to the sick bay of Scheveningen prison.

On July 13, 2006, de Berk was sentenced again to life imprisonment by the Amsterdam Gerechtshof. The criminal proceedings were thus concluded.

Doubts about procedure and judgment

A group of interested citizens, including the scientific theorist Ton Derksen and his siblings, the doctor Mette de Noo and the sociologist Bram Derksen, became aware of the de Berk case and, upon examining the case, concluded that Lucia de Berk was the victim had become a miscarriage of justice. In December 2005, they went public with their investigation results. An increasing number of scholars joined them and confirmed that the methods used in the criminal case against de Berk did not meet scientific standards.

Criticisms

  • The two Lucia de Berk murders, allegedly proven by toxicological reports, may also have been natural deaths; in one case the toxicological investigation was carried out using unsuitable methods, and in a second case two doctors were present during the time window established for the alleged administration of the poison to the patient ;
  • the statistical studies that appeared to show that there was an extremely low probability of a series of natural deaths occurring randomly in the presence of de Berk was based on false assumptions. The statisticians took it for granted that the deaths were murders committed by a nurse. Their statistical analysis was only aimed at identifying the one suspected murderer among the nurses employed in the clinics. Furthermore, it was wrong to determine the probability of the accidental presence of de Berks for the deaths in three clinics separately and then to determine the probability of the accidental presence in all cases by simply multiplying the three results;
  • the first indictment against de Berk involved thirteen deaths, some of which a de Berk murder was ruled out simply because de Berk was off duty at the time of death. In all thirteen cases, a natural death was initially certified.

Excursus: Commission for the review of closed criminal proceedings

On June 22, 2000, a ten-year-old girl was raped and strangled in a park in Schiedam, and her eleven-year-old playmate was seriously injured by knife wounds. A suspect was identified on September 5, 2000. He confessed to the offenses under police interrogation and was sentenced to 18 years in prison and to Terbeschikkingstelling as a sex offender . Four years later, another man confessed to the crime and revealed the perpetrator's knowledge . The case was reviewed in detail in 2005 by the Posthumus Commission, a commission of lawyers and criminalists chaired by the Dutch Attorney General Frits Posthumus . When the Posthumus Commission presented its report in September 2005, it found serious errors in the investigations and criminal proceedings into the Schiedam parking murder. There were also suspicions that innocent people had received long prison sentences in other cases. This was the reason for the establishment of the Commission for the Review of Completed Criminal Proceedings (Dutch: Commissie evaluatie afgesloten strafzaken - CEAS ) or Posthumus II Commission. The commission consisted of lawyers and criminologists and, in addition to a three-person initial committee, which decided on the acceptance of cases for review, a three-person committee for each accepted case carried out the investigation and formulated a recommendation to the public prosecutor's office. The CEAS was dissolved in 2012 and its duties were transferred to the Attorney General at the High Council of the Netherlands. Unlike the British Criminal Cases Review Commission , it was not an independent body, but part of the administration of justice.

Commission for the Review of Closed Criminal Proceedings

In August 2006, shortly after the criminal proceedings against de Berk had been finalized with a life sentence, Ton Derksen turned to Ybo Buruma , chairman of the Commission for the Review of Completed Criminal Proceedings, to review the case. He justified his submission by saying that the forensic experts, who had ruled out natural causes of death in several criminal proceedings, did not have all the necessary information. In particular, this concerned the exonerating toxicological report from a laboratory in Strasbourg , which the Nederlands Forensisch Instituut had not forwarded for two years. The expert opinion was only brought into the proceedings at the hearing before the Amsterdam Gerechtshof in July 2006, at which time the public prosecutor falsely claimed that it contained no new information, and the exonerating expert opinion could no longer be taken into account due to the fact that evidence was excluded from the outset . The Commission's Incoming Committee accepted the de Berk case on October 19, 2006 for review. The committee of three appointed on the following day included:

The task of the tripartite committee was to answer the following questions:

  1. Was it lawful to limit the investigation to those deaths in which Lucia de Berk was a possible murderer and to exclude all deaths that were certainly not to blame for de Berk?
  2. Which experts were called in, and why these experts?
  3. Which data were available to the statisticians called in as experts and was this database correct and complete?
  4. What information was available to the forensic medical experts and was this information correct and complete?
  5. Do the files contain a report from the Pieter Baan Centrum (a facility for the psychiatric examination of offenders) and does this report contain information on the probative value and the interpretation of Lucia de Berk's diary entries?
  6. Have the different scientific opinions regarding the detection of digoxin been adequately recognized in the investigations and in the criminal proceedings?

On October 29, 2007, the committee published its investigation report, together with a recommendation to retrial because of serious procedural errors.

The committee's recommendation was based on

  • the determination of expert reports which lacked a sufficient factual basis;
  • the finding made by statistician Richard Gill that the chance presence of de Berks in all deaths had a probability of - depending on the calculation method - 1 in 48 or even only 1 in 5. The expert in the first criminal case had stated 1 in 342 million;
  • the incorrect interpretation of toxicological findings by the expert who found digoxin poisoning in the first case, and the inadequate assessment of various expert opinions on this;
  • the rash determination of Lucia de Berk as the perpetrator and the exclusion of alternative scenarios by the investigators;
  • the finding that in the two years before Lucia de Berk was appointed to the JKZ, more patients died under unexplained circumstances than during their work. If the police had also checked those cases for possible criminal offenses as the cause, they might have judged de Berk differently.

The main piece of evidence leading to de Berk's conviction was the flawed evidence of digoxin poisoning in the last suspected victim, seven-month-old Amber, who died on September 4, 2001. In fact, the patient died of natural causes. The courts had convicted Lucia de Berk of this allegedly proven murder and, without further substantive evidence, linked the conviction for the other deaths. In the exonerating report from 2006, the original evidence of digoxin poisoning was questioned. With the help of the liquid chromatography with mass spectrometry coupling , which is now used , the body's own digoxin-like substances ( digoxin-like immunoreactive substances - DLIS ) can be differentiated from the digoxin supplied. The diagnostic methods previously used in the proceedings against de Berk did not allow such a distinction. The body's DLIS levels can be significantly increased by a number of factors, including drugs other than digoxin and liver disease.

Retrial

On April 2, 2008, the State Secretary for Justice ordered de Berk's prison sentence to be suspended initially for three months. In support of this, he stated in a letter to the chairman of the Second Chamber of the States General that the report of the commission to review closed criminal proceedings had raised serious doubts about the legality of de Berk's conviction.

On June 17, 2008, the Attorney General of the Netherlands, Geert Knigge , presented the de Berk case to the High Council. According to the Dutch Code of Criminal Procedure - as in German criminal procedure law - the reopening of the proceedings requires the submission of new evidence. Knigge requested that the criminal proceedings be reopened in relation to the homicides. He justified this with the fact that the conclusion that Lucia de Berk must have committed the large number of murders she was accused of, since one had been proven, could not stand up to scrutiny. A new forensic expert, the toxicologist Jan Meulenbelt from the Rijksinstituut voor Volksgezondheid en Milieu , found that the alleged murder victim Amber died from natural causes. He described the investigation into the de Berk murder case as a textbook example of "tunnel vision". Knigge called the appraisal of her diary entries about “compulsion” and “tarot” a circular argument .

The lawyers de Berks requested to extend the originally limited to July 1, 2008 suspension of the execution of the sentence. On June 24, 2008, the High Council suspended the execution of the sentence pending a decision on the retrial.

On October 7, 2008, the High Council of the Netherlands decided to reopen the proceedings, not because of the (rejected) recommendation of the Commission to review closed criminal cases, but because of the submission of the Public Prosecutor's Office with the RIVM's new opinion, which the High Council considered the new Proof was accepted. The case was referred to the Gerechtshof, Arnhem.

New criminal case

At the beginning of 2009 the new criminal proceedings against Lucia de Berk were opened before the Gerechtshof in Arnhem. The defense requested the immediate acquittal of de Berk, as the basis of the existing judgment had broken off. The Gerechtshof commissioned Professor Meulenbelt with further investigations into the death of Amber and two other patients who died in the Juliana Children's Hospital. In these cases, most of the incriminating evidence was presented in the first trial. Professor Meulenbelt's work should be reviewed by other independent experts.

On December 17, 2009, a preliminary hearing took place in Arnhem , the director's titting provided for in Dutch criminal procedure law . In it, the court, the public prosecutor and the defense made agreements on the scope and course of the upcoming main hearing. It was agreed on March 17, 2010 as the date for the main hearing, at which only Professor Meulenbelt should present his findings as a toxicological expert. The public prosecutor's office has already announced that it will plead for acquittal at the hearing.

On March 17, 2010 , the public prosecutor pleaded before the Arnhem Gerechtshof for acquittal in all accused cases of committed and attempted murders.

On April 14, 2010, the criminal proceedings against Lucia de Berk ended in an acquittal. In the grounds of the judgment, it was stated that all of the indicted cases were natural deaths. The new reports submitted confirmed the doubts put forward by Tom Derksen, Metta de Noo and the Commission for the Review of Closed Criminal Cases about the judgment of the first instance. The deaths held against Lucia de Berk were favored by deficiencies in diagnosis and therapy at the Juliana Children's Hospital.

The new criminal proceedings only concerned the homicide crimes accused of de Berk; the convictions for theft, forgery of documents and false statements were not the subject of the proceedings. Since de Berk's license as a nurse has never been withdrawn, she can continue to call herself a nurse (Dutch: Verpleegkundige ) and practice her profession again.

Indemnity

On November 12, 2010, it was announced that Lucia de Berk had agreed with the public prosecutor's office on compensation in an undisclosed amount for six and a half years of wrongly suffered imprisonment. Your employer, HagaZiekenhuis as the legal successor to the Juliana Children's Hospital, paid de Berk damages in the amount of 45,000 euros. The then Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin wrote a letter of apology to de Berk in which he described the course of events as "terrifying". No one has been held criminally responsible for de Berk's unjustified detention.

Book publications

In 2006 the book Lucia de B. Reconstructie van een Nahrungsmittelelijke dwaling (German: Lucia de B. Reconstruction of a miscarriage of justice ) by the scientific theorist Ton Derksen and his sister-in-law Metta de Noo was published. In it they summarized their findings on the procedural errors in the Lucia de Berk case and expressed their demand for a retrial. The book also contained details of the medical treatment of several alleged murder victims whose first names were given. The parents of one of the patients saw this as a violation of their daughter's post-mortem personal rights and sued the authors and the publisher. The legal bank of Amsterdam dismissed the lawsuit in October 2006.

The de Berk case was represented in several other book publications, including her own book Lucia de B. Levenslang en tbs , published in 2010 , which was preceded by a foreword by the writer Maarten 't Hart . Several scientific publications addressed the case in connection with the use of statistical methods in criminal proceedings and tunnel vision as a disruptive element in criminal proceedings.

filming

The director Paula van der Oest processed the fate of Lucia de Berk in her feature film Lucia de B. , which is based on a book Metta de Noos . The title role was played by the Dutch actress Ariane Schluter . Metta de Noo later criticized that the film did not fully reflect the facts. The film was broadcast on Dutch television on December 11, 2015.

Lucia de B. was the Dutch entry for the category Best Foreign Language Film at the 87th Oscars and was shortlisted.

literature

  • Ronald Meester, Marieke Collins, Richard Gill, Michiel van Lambalgen: On the (ab) use of statistics in the legal case against the nurse Lucia de B. In: Law, Probability and Risk 2006, Volume 5, No. 3–4, Pp. 233-250, doi : 10.1093 / lpr / mgm003 ;
  • David Lucy: Commentary on Meester et al. 'On the (ab) use of statistics in the legal case against nurse Lucia de B.' . In: Law, Probability and Risk 2006, Volume 5, No. 3-4, pp. 251-254, doi : 10.1093 / lpr / mgm004 ;
  • Celine MI van Asperen de Boer: De Rol Van Statistiek Bij Strafrechtelijke Bewijsvoering . Gelling Publishing, Nieuwerkerk aan de IJssel 2007, ISBN 978-9078-440086 (Dutch);
  • J. de Ridder, CM Klein Haarhuis, WM de Jongste: De CEAS aan het werk. Bevindingen over het functioneren van de Commissie Evaluatie Afgesloten Strafzaken 2006-2008 . Boom Juridische uitgevers, Mdeppel 2008, ISBN 978-90-8974-087-8 , PDF, 2.9 MB (Dutch);
  • Lucia de Berk: Lucia de B. Levenslang en tbs . De Arbeiderspers, Amsterdam 2010, ISBN 978-9029-572620 , with a foreword by the writer Maarten 't Hart (Dutch);
  • Ton Derksen : Lucia de B. Reconstructie van eenrechteelijke dwaling . Veen Magazines, Diemen 2006, ISBN 908-5710-480 (Dutch);
  • Ton Derksen: Het OM in de fout. 94 structurele missers . Veen Magazines, Diemen 2008, ISBN 978-9085-711704 (Dutch);
  • Metta de Noo: Er werd mij verteld, over Lucia de B. Aspect, Soesterberg 2010, ISBN 978-90-5911-974-1 (Dutch);
  • Eric Rassin: Waarom ik altijd gelijk heb. Over tunnel vision . Scriptum, Schiedam 2007, ISBN 978-9055-945634 (Dutch).

Primary sources

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Leila Schneps and Coralie Colmez: Math on Trial. How Numbers Get Used and Abused in the Courtroom . Basic Books, New York City 2013, ISBN 978-0-465-03794-0 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Chrisje Brants: Wrongful Convictions and Inquisitorial Process: The Case of the Netherlands . In: University of Cincinnati Law Review 2013, Volume 80, No. 4, Article 2, Online , accessed December 21, 2018.
  3. ↑ a b c d e Mark Buchanan : Conviction by numbers . In: Nature 2007, Volume 445, No. 7125, pp. 254-255, doi : 10.1038 / 445254a .
  4. ↑ a b c d e Ronald Meester, Marieke Collins, Richard Gill, Michiel van Lambalgen: On the (ab) use of statistics in the legal case against the nurse Lucia de B. In: Law, Probability and Risk 2006, Volume 5, No. 3-4, pp. 233-250, doi : 10.1093 / lpr / mgm003 .
  5. ^ A b c d e Theodore A. de Roos and Johannes F. Nijboer: Wrongfully Convicted: How the Dutch Deal with the Revision of Their “Miscarriages of Justice” . In: Criminal Law Forum 2011, Volume 22, pp. 567-591, doi : 10.1007 / s10609-011-9159-8 .
  6. ^ A b c Mark Buchanan: The Prosecutor's Fallacy . In: [The New York Times] of May 16, 2007.
  7. ↑ Lucia de B. vrijgesproken van moorden .
personal data
SURNAME Berk, Lucia de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES B., Lucia de (shortened name in media reports); Berk, Lucy de (anglicized name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch pediatric nurse and victim of a miscarriage of justice
DATE OF BIRTH September 22, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH The hague