Medical Murders

The German nurse went on trial in April for the murder of six people and the attempted murder of two others between June 2005 and October 2006.

Irene Becker, who had known the seriously ill patients well, told the Berlin court that she regretted administering the lethal drug overdoses but had wanted to spare them further suffering.

"I am sorry to have intervened in the destiny of people," she said, and asked the families of her victims for forgiveness. "With hindsight I realize that what I did was wrong."

Deciding over life and death

Berlin's Charite hospital, Europe's biggest university hospital, came in for manifold criticism throughout the trial for failing to raise the alarm earlier.

Becker, who worked in cardiology, was arrested in October 2006 after a fellow nurse alerted a doctor about the disturbingly high number of patients dying in their ward.

Most of the nurse's victims had been elderly and close to death.

"I acted in the interests of my patients," she told the court at the start of the trial, after confessing to four of the murders. "I acted according to their wishes."

But state prosecutor Thorsten Neudeck said the nurse believed that she had the right to decide over life and death, and disputed Becker's claim that she had acted out of sympathy for the patients.

Lack of remorse

The court decided there was no evidence to suggest this was true and accused Becker of showing insufficient remorse.

"(She) wanted to show she had power," said prosecuting lawyer Brigitte Raddatz. "None of her patients asked her to do what she did."

Neudeck alleged the nurse had given one male patient a lethal injection in 2005 simply because she was angry that he would not calm down.

In another case, he told the court Becker gave a woman with a weak heart a fatal dose of blood pressure medication while the patient's husband was sitting by her bed.

A male nurse was given a life sentence in Germany in 2006 for administering lethal injections to 28 mostly elderly patients.