Usti nad Labem, North Bohemia, Jan 21 (CTK) – A Czech court acquitted yesterday nurse Vera Maresova who was suspected of having murdered six patients in the Rumburk hospital in order to make her job easier, since no piece of evidence has proved the suspicion, according to the court.
The verdict has not taken effect because the state attorney appealed it.
Maresova was suspected of having overdosed the patients with potassium. The state attorney proposed a life sentence for her.
However, experts’ opinions did not confirm the patients’ poisoning by potassium.
“Quite unambiguously, there is no direct evidence. No written evidence or a witness proving the accused woman’s guilt appeared during the trial,” Roman Felzmann, head of the panel of judges, said.
The state attorney insisted in his final speech that Maresova had committed the murders, and he appealed her acquittal on the spot.
Felzmann said the court mainly based its decision on the opinion of experts and that it was up to the state attorney to prove a suspect’s guilt.
Maresova told the court that in her opinion several witnesses, including a doctor from the Rumburk hospital, who was the first to accuse her, did not speak the truth. She pleaded not guilty.
“I killed no one, I did not help anyone die, nor did I harm anyone,” Maresova said.
The experts who completed an analysis at the court’s request, supported the view of Maresova´s defence lawyer saying that the deaths of the patients were expectable.
Furthermore, the experts dismissed potassium poisoning as the cause of the patients’ death.
Asked whether he can rule out a fatal dose of potassium unambiguously, expert Martin Dobias said “it can never be ruled out unambiguously, but it cannot be confirmed unambiguously.”
Dobias criticised the sluggishness and wrong conclusions made by the doctors who performed the autopsy and examined the blood samples of the patient who died the last of the six in June 2014.
