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School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science

Professor gives evidence in case of nurse convicted of murdering patients

Queen Mary Professor Norman Fenton was one of four eminent statisticians to submit reports used in evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in Ben Geen's appeal against his conviction.

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Queen Mary Professor Norman Fenton was one of four eminent statisticians to submit reports used in evidence to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in Ben Geen's appeal against his conviction.

Queen Mary Professor Norman Fenton was one of four eminent statisticians to have raised concerns about the quality of evidence used to convict a nurse of murdering two patients and poisoning 15 others.

Ben Geen, 34, is serving a 30-year sentence after being convicted in 2006 of injecting patients with a variety of drugs in order to “satisfy his lust for excitement” when reviving them.

Geen’s legal team submitted independent reports by the statisticians to the Criminal Cases Review Commission in a bid to have the case referred to the appeal court.

In his analysis, Profesor Fenton concluded that, though 18 respiratory arrests in a two-month period is high, at least one hospital in the country would be expected to see this many events over a four-year period, purely by chance. “It didn’t seem a particularly unusual sequence of events,” he said. “If that was the starting point for the inquiry then that’s problematic.”

Read about this story in the Guardian

 

 

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