Benjamin Geen is a former nurse who was convicted of murdering two patients and causing grievous bodily harm to 15 others while working at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire in 2003 and 2004. He has maintained his innocence and statisticians have argued that a statistical resulted in the suspicions that led to Geen's arrest and imprisonment.
Crime
Between December 2003 and February 2004, 18 patients treated in the hospital's accident and emergency department suffered respiratory arrests or depressions while Geen, a trainee casualty nurse, was alone with each patient. Two of those patients died in January 2004: Anthony Bateman and David Onley. An internal investigation initially identified 25 patients who had experienced sudden respiratory arrest or failure under Geen's care, but nine were discounted before administrators alerted the police. Geen was arrested on 9 February 2004, whereupon a syringe containing traces of the muscle relaxantvecuronium bromide was found in his pocket. Geen claimed that he had accidentally taken the syringe home in a pocket of his scrubs after a chaotic day. The Thames Valley Police conducted an investigation involving up to 40 officers, and Geen was formally accused of two murders and of inflicting grievous bodily harm with intent upon 16 patients.
Trial
During his trial, the OxfordCrown Court was told that Geen purposely used insulin, sedatives, and muscle relaxants to trigger respiratory arrest or failure in patients because he enjoyed the 'thrill' of resuscitating them. On 18 April 2006, a jury found Geen guilty of the two murder charges and of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm on 15 patients. On 9 May 2006 Geen, then 25 years old, was given 17 life sentences with the recommendation that he spend at least 30 years in prison before being considered for parole. In court, Geen maintained his innocence and vowed to appeal his conviction.
Appeal
Geen's case was reviewed by lawyers and volunteers from the London Innocence Project. Geen's barrister, Michael PowersQC, has stated that "there was a major miscarriage of justice." Medical statistician Jane Hutton submitted a arguing that the Crown's central evidence—that there had been an 'unusual' pattern of illnesses—was of 'no value' because no statistical modelling had been done to show that the pattern was unusual. She found the 'pattern' method to be at grave risk of bias. Dr. Mark Heath, a consultant anaesthesiologist who has testified in U.S. Supreme Court cases, argued in another that the pattern of patient collapses was inconsistent with the drugs Geen was said to have injected in seven cases. Rather than passing out, patients injected with muscle relaxants would be paralysed, unable to breathe but totally conscious. Other medical experts pointed out that the likely cause of death in the case of Mr Onley, a gravely-ill patient whom Geen was found to have murdered, was not a heart attack triggered by respiratory arrest but liver failure caused by the patient's alcoholism, unknown to the hospital when he was admitted. Mark McDonald, founder and chair of the London Innocence Project, has stated that he believes the case against Geen was manufactured to fit the circumstances. Geen's family believes he is the victim of a "witch-hunt" by officials seeking to avoid mistakes made in the case of Dr. Harold Shipman. A first appeal failed in November 2009, "we see nothing in the proposed grounds of appeal". In February 2010, Geen's case was submitted to the Criminal Cases Review Commission and was launched by the London Innocence Project. The CCRC has commissioned statistical research into the rarity or otherwise of respiratory arrest in hospital emergency departments.
