Verdict overturned in the second trial, life imprisonment for the Piombino nurse who gave lethal injections

The life sentence concerns four cases of patients who died following lethal heparin injections. Fausta Bonino was acquitted for six other cases

BOLOGNA – Life imprisonment for Fausta Bonino, the nurse at the Piombino hospital accused of killing several patients with equally lethal injections: a verdict that overturns the proceeding trial ended with an acquittal. In fact, the life sentence arrived in the bis trial, which took place in the Court of Appeal after the Cassation annulled the acquittal of the woman which had arrived in the previous appeal trial. The woman was acquitted in the previous trial for ten dead patients, the Court of Cassation ordered a new trial for four cases (confirming the acquittal for the other six), which are the four for which she was sentenced to life imprisonment today.< /p>

The deaths occurred between 2014 and 2015. Fausta Bonino was arrested in March 2016: the investigations included 13 cases of suspicious deaths in Piombino hospital. The prosecution has always held the nurse responsible for the heparin injections that caused the patients’ deaths. It is an anticoagulant which in massive doses can be lethal because it causes serious bleeding. Fausta Bonino has always said she was innocent. 

The investigation, which began in 2015, began after the report of yet another inexplicable deathof an elderly gentleman due to widespread bleeding not directly linked to the pathologies he was suffering from. The deceased patients, men and women aged between 61 and 88, in many cases had pathologies for which the administration of heparin was not part of the possible therapies. The Nas Carabinieri who carried out the investigations, checking the shifts in the department, had identified the woman as present in all the suspicious shifts (potentially related to the deaths) in the Anesthesia and Intensive Care Department where the nurse worked.