Lucia de Berk

In the last decade in the Netherlands we had some very serious cases of judicial errors.
Maybe the worst of them was the case of Lucia de Berk, a nurse who in the days after “nine-eleven” was snatched from the house of her grandparents where at that moment her grandfather lay dying and accused of 5 murders and 5 attempted murders on babies and elderly persons.

This (2010) April the 14th she was acquitted of all charges by the Court of Arnhem after a judicial process of nine years.

Stronger still… the Court judged that there were no murders!!

Almost immediately the public prosecutors, the judges of all the judicial courts concerned and the Minister of Justice offered her their apologies.

Only the director of the hospital who started all this, told the day before the acquittal on tv that in a similar case he would act exactly as he had done in this case.

Lucia de Berk’s book came out the day after the acquittal. Most of it is based on a diary written in prison during nighttimes when there was less control by the wardens. She deemed it necessary to remove the bitterness from the story, and in my opinion she has done so successfully, you don’t meet a bitter woman.
But the book does give a clear picture of how she was considered less than human these years by most persons “in office”: her own boss the hospital director, policemen, prison warders, public prosecutors, judges, media.
As the Americans had Bin Laden, we had Lucia - to my big shame I must admit that I too believed a lot of this mud till I read Maarten 't Hart’s important 2006 NRC article “A nowadays witch process’’.

Lucia tells about her perplexity, about the debilitating interrogations, about life in prison, about the few good people who believed in her innocence (her daughter, her lover, some prison inmates, a few family members, and the persons who started fighting for her case).

In 2004 the High Court of The Hague sentenced Lucia to life on 7 counts of murder and 3 of attempted murder. She also got TBS (is made a ward of court with mandatory psychotherapy) – an instrument aimed at rehabilitation.

In 2006 the Court of Appeal (our highest) referred the case to the Court of Amsterdam. There judgement was upheld but a point in law had to be clarified: is TBS compatible with a life sentence?

Lucia was bitterly disappointed but tried hard to conceal her despair out of fear to be put in an isolation cell. Four days later she had a cerebral haemorrhage and hours too late, only after much noise was made by some inmates, she was taken care of (but physiotherapy she never got and so she lost the use of her right arm and some of her speech ability).
Here ends this alarming, well written book that left me with a feeling of deep sorrow because of this affectionate woman’s "fate".
And with the nagging question why this process went so totally off the rails.

For the case, see http://www.luciadeb.nl/english/the-murders.html

Zie ook column Malou van Hinten: "Nulkommaniks": http://extra.volkskrant.nl/opinie/artikel/show/id/5610/Nulkommaniks
Eén van de reacties daarop is van hoogleraar rechtsfilosofie Wagenaar:

“Prima column. Ik heb hetzelfde steeds gezegd, oa laatst in het NOS Journaal. Maar de vraag is: zetten de media er nu druk op? U hebt invloed op politici. Femke Halsema (Groen links) en Jan de Wit (SP) hebben openlijk gezegd dat ze een revisieraad willen, maar dat levert nog geen meerderheid op. Nu zou de Volkskrant er een issue van moeten maken.
Prof. Dr. W.A. Wagenaar”… (plus d'informations)

Lucia de Berk wordt in december 2001 gearresteerd op verdenking van moord op vier volwassenen en drie kinderen. Allemaal overleden ze in ziekenhuizen waar De Berk werkzaam was. In de media krijgt ze al snel de bijnamen ‘Zuster Dood’ en ‘Engel des doods’. De rechtbank veroordeelt haar in maart 2003 tot levenslang; ruim een jaar later oordeelt het gerechtshof net zo, dan zelfs met tbs. Na onderzoek naar de bewijsvoering wordt de zaak uiteindelijk in 2008 heropend. Lucia de Berk wordt vrijgelaten. Ze heeft ruim zes jaar gevangen gezeten. Op 17 maart 2010 eist het om vrijspraak. Uiteindelijk wordt Lucia op 14 april 2010 vrijgesproken van alle veroordelingen.… (plus d'informations)