Benjamin Geen

Benjamin Geen is a former nurse convicted of murdering two patients and causing grievous bodily harm to 15 others in 2004 while working at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire. He has maintained his innocence and statisticians have pointed to circumstantial evidence as an example of poor reasoning about rare events.

Between December 2003 and February 2004, 7 patients suffered respiratory arrests and respiratory depressions while Ben Geen was on duty. While 5 patients recovered soon after, two patients died in January 2004: Anthony Bateman and David Onley. Geen was arrested on February 9, 2004, whereupon an empty syringe was found in his pocket. Later test indicated the presence of a muscle relaxant.

Geen claimed that he had accidentally taken the half-empty syringe home in his nurse's scrubs' pocket after a chaotic day in Emergency. His girlfriend, a nurse herself, doing the washing, said that she had found it and had told him he ought to return in to be disposed of properly.

The internal hospital investigation identified a total 27 cases (not just of respiratory arrest) that were to be scrutinised as being suspicious and that Geen could have been involved in. Nine were later discounted and Geen was charged with having administered unauthorised drugs causing respiratory or hypoglycemic arrest in 18 cases. He was acquitted in one of the 18 cases, which was found to be due to natural causes.

During his trial, the Oxford Crown Court was told that Geen purposely used potentially lethal doses of drugs to cause patients to stop breathing because he enjoyed the thrill of resuscitating them. He was found guilty in April 2006, and given 17 life sentences. The trial judge recommended that he should spend at least 30 years in prison before being considered for parole.

Geen's case was reviewed by lawyers and volunteers from the London Innocence Project. The review found a number of flaws in the original trial, and lawyers came to the conclusion that Geen was "the victim of a major miscarriage of justice."

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