On one hand, Benjamin Geen was a nurse who murdered two patients and injured fifteen more. On the other, it could all be a case of a “statistical anomaly”.
Benjamin Geen was born in 1980, and was determined to become a nurse. At the time of the incidents mentioned above, he was working at Horton General Hospital in Banbury, Oxfordshire. Between 2003 and 2004, incidents at this hospital would change Geen’s life forever.
Between the months of December 2003 and February 2004, 18 patients were admitted to the hospital’s accident and emergency (A&E) department, with Benjamin Geen attending to them. At the time, Geen was a trainee casualty nurse, and he was alone on duty. All of these patients were admitted for respiratory arrests or depressions.
In January of 2004, 65-year-old Anthony Bateman and 75-year-old David Onley died while Geen was on duty. Complaints were made to other hospital staff. It wasn’t long before staff took not of something odd – Benjamin Geen had been attending to both patients. An internal investigation ensued.
The results of that investigation showed that, in addition to the two deceased patients, another 25 had experienced sudden respiratory arrest or respiratory failure while under Geen’s watch. Of those 25, 9 were discounted. Hospital staff were left with no other choice – they alerted the police. “The Thames Valley Police conducted an investigation involving up to 40 officers.”
On the morning of February 9th, 2004, as Geen was arriving for work at the hospital, he was arrested by police. Frantically, he emptied a syringe that had been in his jacket pocket. Police decided to test to lining of the pocket to see if the contents of the syringe had leaked. They were in luck. Testing found trace amounts of vecuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant, and midalzolam, an anaesthetic.
Police suspected that it was this combination of substances that Geen used on his patients in order to force a respiratory event. They posited that Geen enjoyed the “thrill”, the control, of causing harm to his patients, just to swoop in an “save the day”. It had been a “successful” plan, until the deaths in January.
Geen told police that this was all false – loudly proclaiming his innocence. He claimed that he’d mistakenly taken the syringe home. He said that the A&E department is often stressful and frantic – doctors and nurses often stuff their pockets with useful items to facilitate triage and diagnosis. The syringe had simply been left in his pocket after his shift.
Police didn’t buy this story. Armed with probable cause and search warrants, police went on to search both Geen’s home, and his girlfriend’s apartment. At both homes, police found medications that could only be obtained with a prescription. The medications were traced back to the hospital, where they’d been marked as stolen or missing.
Caught, Geen admitted to stealing the medications and using them personally. Armed with this information, police soon began questioning him about the patients who had been flagged by the internal investigation. Geen denied any wrongdoing, but he did admit that he’d been the nurse on duty when all of those patients had come through the A&E department.
Geen was then formally charged with two counts of murder, and inflicting grievous bodily harm.
“During his trial, the Oxford Crown Court was told that Geen purposely used insulin, sedatives, and muscle relaxants to trigger respiratory arrest or failure in patients.” The prosecution argued that Geen “came alive” and was “elated” when his patients went into respiratory arrest. He enjoyed controlling whether they lived or died. They called it “a lust for the thrill”.
Fellow colleagues testified to his nature, calling him “gung ho” and stating that his overconfidence was not an indicator of his competence. As hospital staff became more and more suspicious of Geen’s actions, especially around the oddly high number of incidents that occurred while he was on duty, one doctor testified that Geen had been boastful. “There is always a resuscitation when I’m on duty,” Geen told the doctor with apparent glee and confidence.
On April 18th, 2006, after a nine week trial, Benjamin Geen was found guilty of two charges of murder and 15 charges of intentionally inflicting grievous bodily harm. Through the entire process, Geen proclaimed his innocence, and vowed to appeal the conviction.
At the age of 25, on May 8th, 2006, Geen was given “17 life sentences with the recommendation that he spend at least 30 years in prison before being considered for parole.” Geen was told that this was the cost of the “terrible betrayal” not only to the patients who were under his care, but to the betrayal of trust of others in the medical profession.
Micheal Powers QC, Geen’s barrister, stated that “there was a major miscarriage of justice” and vowed to see his client vindicated. The case was taken to lawyers and volunteers from the London Innocence Project. And this is where the case gets tricky.
Jane Hutton, of the University of Warwick, reviewed the case as a medical statistician. She argued in a report that the evidence of there being an “unusual pattern of illnesses” was worthless. She stated that no “statistical modelling had been done to show that the pattern was unusual.” She went on to say that it was possible that the hospital’s internal investigation had fallen victim to confirmation bias – they were told that unusual happenings occurred while Geen was on duty, so they looked only at data for when Geen was on duty.
Norman Fenton, a professor of risk management information at Queen Mary London University, seemed to be in general agreement with Hutton’s assessment. He stated that the incidents of respiratory arrest or depression occurring while Geen was on duty was a statistical anomaly. Furthermore, he said that it could all be a case of “exaggerated coincidence”.
However, it is worth noting that “neither Hutton nor Fenton were arguing that Geen was innocent, merely making a case for greater statistical rigour.”
The London Innocence Project strongly believes in Geen’s innocence. Mark McDonald, the founder and chair of the Project, “has stated that he believes the case against Geen was manufactured to fit the circumstances.” He and Geen’s family also strongly suggest that Geen is the victim of a “witch hunt” – 18 people came through A&E with respiratory failure, and someone had to pay for that. And the person paying is Benjamin Geen.
In November of 2009, now armed with new arguments, the defence headed their first appeal of Geen’s convictions. They failed.
Following this, Geen’s defence team submitted the case to the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC). The CCRC went on to commission research on the statistics of anomalies of respiratory failure or arrests in hospital emergency departments. After the commission of statistics, the CCRC then refused to reopen the case. They saw no need to reassess the appeal, nor to look at the statistical evidence gathered by the London Innocence Project and Geen’s defence.
Geen’s team was not deterred. They went on to take the CCRC to the High Court. The High Court ultimately made the decision that the CCRC should “re-evaluate the application”. This application is now backed by leading experts, hoping to prove that Geen is the victim of a series of unfortunate events.
The case is still ongoing within the CCRC.
On the one hand, Geen could have been an angel of death. On the other, he very well could be “the unluckiest man in England.”
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Sources:
An unusual pattern: Is Benjamin Geen a killer or England’s unluckiest man – Joel Werner and Tiger Webb – ABC Radio National
Ben Geen: Thrill-seeking killer nurse or innocent victim of statistics – Jon Robins – The Justice Gap
17 life sentences for nurse who killed patients for thrills – Patrick Barkham – The Guardian
Benjamin Geen Wikipedia page