PARIS, February 4, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A French nurse who once admitted to “helping 30 patients to die” at the suburban Francois-Quesnay hospital was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the murder of six patients. Her lawyer had her retract the earlier admission on grounds she had been under the influence of drugs when she was first arrested in 1998. The final report recorded 11 suspicious deaths, but there was insufficient evidence to press charges in all cases. Christine Malevre, 33, was also banned for life from nursing. Ms. Malevre claims that she was acting out of compassion for terminally ill patients. Psychiatrists testified that she had a “morbid fascination with illness” and had given lethal injections that were never asked for. A lawyer for three of the victims’ families, Olivier Morice, said: “Christine Malevre is not the Madonna of euthanasia she makes herself out to be, but on the contrary a woman who is unbalanced and who deliberately overstepped her authority. ... If [she] had been tried for killing seven people in good health,” he said, “we’d be far from 10 years and closer to life in prison.”
See BBC coverage at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2714831.stm